What is a Pantone process color?

Hi,
Hope you're doing well.
I am just starting to learn about colors and printing.
I have a job I am working on where the printer requires the Pantone colors. The person who originally created the file kept them as CMYK.
I have been converting them to Pantones by using the Edit/Edit Colors/re-color artwork feature where you then choose a Pantone library and Illustrator converts it to a Pantone.
However, with one color conversion, it didn't give me a number, it gave me "Pantone Process Yellow C." Does that mean it is still CMYK?
Thanks!

You are not correct. What you call Pantone colour, in this example, is more accurately called a spot ink. Spot inks can be produced by many companies and specified using any of those companies’ systems or none at all. Pantone is simply the most well known. Pantone also has a library of process colours, with a corresponding swatch book they would love to sell you. I have two of them, one for coated paper, one for uncoated.
Using spot colours can reduce the number of inks used to print a job, but that is not their primary purpose. The range of colours you can reproduce using process CMYK inks on white paper (also known as the gamut) is large, but limited. Also, most of those colours require one or more of those inks to be screened. If you want to exactly match a specific colour, like the red on a can of Coke, then your only option may be to use spot inks.
If you have fine details like small type that uses colour, you will get a more legible result if you print using a single solid spot ink than if you use two or more inks, any or all of which may print as a screen. Spot inks can also increase the number of inks in a job if they are combines with process colours or if you have more than four spot inks.
If you are printing on non-white paper, but need the ink colour to be exact, then process colours will not work since they are translucent. Most spot inks are as well, but they can be very opaque.
Pantone and other companies produce special inks with metallic components that simply cannot be reproduced any other way.
Each ink used requires another plate on a press and uses up one station on the press. Most offset presses have at least six stations, but there is no limit beyond cost and space. I have prepared files that use ten stations for printers that have eight station presses. This requires running the job twice through the same press or running it a second time through another press, whichever the printer thinks is more appropriate or economical. I forget, in this case, which of these were done.
The ten stations were four process colours, two spot inks, one flood varnish (covering the whole sheet) one spot varnish, one embossing die, and one cutting die. Now that I think about it, it is obvious that the last two could be done on anything that supports them since there is no ink and a much looser requirement for registration.

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