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Participant
November 10, 2020
Answered

Printing white

  • November 10, 2020
  • 1 reply
  • 4494 views

Hi im trying to print white onto clear vinyl but there's certain parts of the artwork not recognising the white. I am trying to print a Christmas scene and for some reason, especially the faces of the polar bear and snowman for example is just not printing white. I am using versa works 6 rip software and I am using the white Spot on colour. If I do a snowman on its own it will show pink on versaworks so I know it recongises the white but when I put it together the face goes back to grey 🤬. I'm new to all this printing and Adobe business so I know it's something I'm doing/not doing but I can't for the life of me figure out what it is. There's also no clipping masks in the art work.

 

Please can someone help me before I tear my hair out 🙏

 

Thank you in advance 

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Correct answer Luke Jennings3

Ohh this makes sense! Apologies if this sounds stupid but how do i set it to over print? 

Thanks 


If I may answer for SJ, with the object selected, go to Window> Attributes> Overprint. In Illustrator, go to View> Overprint preview to see the overprinting, In Acrobat, the view overprint preference preference should be set to Always. For printing on clear vinyl, white ink may be printed under the other colors, or over the other colors, depending if the work in intended to be viewed from outside or inside a window (the clear vinyl clings to the glass surface). If outside, the image and type will also need to be mirrored. Since spot white ink will be invisible on a PDF, it's common to give it a tint, so it can be seen in the PDF.

1 reply

Monika Gause
Community Expert
Community Expert
November 10, 2020

Most likely the white swatch needs to be set up in a certain way. It needs to be a spot color with a certain name and/or certain color definition or on a certain layer.

You will have to look this up in your printer specification/documentation.

 

Participant
November 10, 2020

Thanks for the reply.

It's already set up as I can print white, the issue arises (which I forgot to put in my post 🙊) when I have colour with white. So for example the snowman is being recognised as white but then when I add eyes nose it stops recognising the face as white? 

Legend
November 10, 2020

When you set up your file at first, you must had had the white ink underneath the color print elements. This seems to make sense intuitively, but (as you have seen), it casues the elements you put above it to knock out the white.

In your art file, place the spot white on a layer above your color print. Set it to overprint so that it does not knock out the other colors. It will be on top in your art file, but you can tell the printer that it will be printed under your other inks.