In Corel, you do this by going to Window/Color Palettes and choosing Pantone Spot Color Coated. It is VERY important to change from the default color palette in any graphics program to a spot color palette, normally called a Pantone color palette. You want to print out spot colors, so that you print these exact colors. But, when you go to the print window all you get are the colors of cyan, magenta, yellow and black.

As a screen printer, you would print these all as spot colors of ink.

On the computer screen, your image will look the same, whether you’re using the default color palette or a spot color palette, but it won’t print properly unless you switch away from CMYK. You click on a color and drag it to the image, if you’re trying to fill a piece of simple clip art with color. If you are new to computer graphics and follow the Corel tutorials or manual, it pretty much says to simply use the default color palette to fill images with color. In the Corel main window, the default “color palette” is a CMYK palette. That means if you create a graphic using CMYK, you’d need to print films for magenta and yellow to make red. In the world of CMYK printing, all colors are made from just cyan, magenta, yellow and black. The problem with that is in T-Shirt screen printing, we rarely use CMYK colors, especially for an image with specific spot colors. It’s important to understand that in all graphic programs the default settings for key parts are designed for paper printing and for printing with CMYK colors (cyan, magenta, yellow and black). One of the most confusing aspects of using these programs is to know what to change to make them screen-print friendly. If you’re a screen printer who is new to using a vector artwork program like Corel Draw or Adobe Illustrator, this article is for you.

Pantone color palette for corel draw