When should I put spot colors (pantone) in CMYK mode in Illustrator, and when should I just leave CMYK?

Question

Seal

Interested in the future, regarding the printing of packaging or other graphics. I watched a video where the author set spot colors , but there was no explanation. It seemed to me that it was enough to switch to CMYK mode and separately write out the pantone numbers for each color, but now I'm confused. Would love to hear answers for: gradients, flat graphics, photos. I will be grateful.

Answer 1

As a first approximation, everything is simple.
Spot colors are used when it is necessary to obtain a fragment of an image of a precisely defined color, without the use of blending, by printing with one ink of the selected color.
There are many cases for this: colors that cannot be obtained by mixing (composite color, for example, fluorescent), thin lines (which may look bad due to even a weak mismatch of colors or because of the raster), light colors with low saturation (which also do not look good when printed in halftone as a composite color due to the resulting low dot frequency). Or the client has a corporate color that is set in Pantone (which does not always make sense, some people with printed color samples even in a video studio stick).
This is quite simple in principle, but remembering all the options is much more difficult than understanding the source of the problem - in fact, the printing process.

Answer 2

I have been working with illustrator for quite a long time, but for the first and only time I encountered pantone quite recently -
in an online printing house, in which we constantly order a lot of everything, the file did not pass the test. As it turned out, they had requirements for this type of printing to translate everything exclusively into pantone.
If interested, here is the product that was ordered.
In general, if you are the one who is engaged in printing, then yes, the issue should be studied very seriously.
If you send it for printing, then the printing house itself must say if pantone colors are required.