Basic difference between two color and four color printing

Journey of Printing from single color to multi color printing is as old as printing technique itself. China was the first country in the world credited with colour printing, however it was limited to only two color and generally done by woodblock printing blocks manually.  Chinese mostly used this two color technique for printing luxury books about art especially it was refer to the most prestigious way of painting that time.  Later on European imbibed this color printing technique and with the beginning of nineteen centaury, European came up with number of color printing technique which led the cornerstone for the today’s multi color printing techniques. 
Basically Multi Color printing is the process of producing color impres
sion by successive printing on the paper and other material from the plates on the machines. Generally multicolor printing involves the use of one-color, two color or multicolor presses and is used in newspaper printing, magazines, color-full Poster and Post card printing.  When one or two color presses are used, a one color print is obtained after each printing cycle  and similarly for four color print, the same process is repeated four or two times to imprint. However there is a lot of difference between four color and two color printing. Four colors printing which is based on CMYK process is the most widely used printing techniques while two color generally called spot color printing is still in use but not in much high commercial scale.

Basic difference between two color and four color printing

For producing two color printing, Pantone colors are the industry requirement. Usually in two color printing we use black ink in combination with other color. In two colors printing, color will be created from the prints of Pantone.  The Pantone Matching System is specially designed to match color accurately. Another complication with the two color printing is that Pantone Matching System should match the paper selected for printing because the vibrancy and dullness of prints directly depends on the choice of paper.  On the other hand four color printing is much easier and does not need any matching system. Color filter technique in four color printing not only produces bright and vibrant images and text but as close as to original image.