From the commercial print industry here comes another brilliantly confusing bit of terminology to understand. Namely variable printing. As can be found in the dictionary, variable means “capable of being changed”, so the basic meaning for the phrase becomes “print that is capable of being changed”.
Let’s walk through a real-world example where variable printing would be used:
You want to mail out thank you postcards to a group of clients that hadn’t ordered from your company in quite some time. Can you imagine how much time it would take to write all of those postcards and then address them all? One way to cut down on a lot of the work would be to create just one message and pre-print it on all the postcards, and then all you need to do is manually add all of the recipient’s names/addresses by hand. Hang on though, you could also use your PC to output all of the recipient’s names and addresses on adhesive label stock and then stick the labels to the postcards? Would that not save even more time and effort?
Unfortunately, the down-side is the fact that your postcards are going to look to be mass-produced with very little thought about providing a personal touch so the chance is less that your marketing effort will make some sort of meaningful impact on the recipient.
Now, what would be the solution? If you thought it might be variable printing you’d be correct.
Variable Printing is an extension of digital print technology that joins a computer spreadsheet file with a digital print press via specialized software. The information held within the spreadsheet is included automatically into the design without any interruption of the printing press. This then allows each and every printed piece to be completelyunique no matter the number ‘up’ on a sheet, or the number of sheets in total.
So, in the case of your thank you postcard, you would have to provide the artwork for the postcard in addition to a separate spreadsheet file (for example: xls, csv, etc.) that holds all of the variable data. The most often used info for variable printing is the recipient name and address, but you can also customize a number of elements within the message which happens to include both the front and back covers.
As an example, imagine the impression that could be made when someone gets a postcard addressed to them (and let’s just say that his name is… John) with the cover titled, “John, we’d like to thank you for your business!” The client will have the perception that you cared sufficiently about his business that you wanted to contact him by his name, call him by his name, as well as thank him by name.
Thursday, June 9, 2011
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
Starting Your CD or DVD Project in Photoshop
It doesn't matter if you're designing a CD manufacturing, CD duplication, DVD manufacturing or DVD duplication project - you're in the realm of commercial printing, and that's different than designing for the internet.
When clients are using Photoshop for commercial printing, two of the most common problems that we face are (A) low-resolution artwork, and (B) incorrect colour mode.
When you import/open or begin a new design from scratch the "New" design page dialogue window (as shown above, or similar to) should appear first.
The name, width and height of your page properties can be left up to you as it will depend on which particular item you're designing, but make sure the resolution is set to 300 pixels/inch and the colour mode is CMYK.
In the event the "New" dialogue window does not present iteself, you can still edit the settings by going to the top of your screen and selecting the following:
Choose Precision Disc Manufacturing Corp. for factory-direct DVD CD manufacturing and DVD CD duplication services complete with a full line of eco-friendly print and packaging solutions.
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When clients are using Photoshop for commercial printing, two of the most common problems that we face are (A) low-resolution artwork, and (B) incorrect colour mode.
- Internet colour mode: RGB
- Typical commercial printing colour mode: CMYK
- Typical internet resolution: 72 dpi (or ppi)
- Typical commercial printing resolution: 300 dpi (or ppi)
When you import/open or begin a new design from scratch the "New" design page dialogue window (as shown above, or similar to) should appear first.
The name, width and height of your page properties can be left up to you as it will depend on which particular item you're designing, but make sure the resolution is set to 300 pixels/inch and the colour mode is CMYK.
In the event the "New" dialogue window does not present iteself, you can still edit the settings by going to the top of your screen and selecting the following:
- Image > Mode > "CMYK"
- Image > Image Size > 300 pixels/inch
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Choose Precision Disc Manufacturing Corp. for factory-direct DVD CD manufacturing and DVD CD duplication services complete with a full line of eco-friendly print and packaging solutions.
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Make A Good First Impression with Your CD Manufacturing Project
Just like showing up for a job interview with a black eye or tattered clothes, if your CD manufacturing project doesn’t look presentable it will immediately cast doubt on the quality of what lies within it – so in the case of your CD packaging, what lies within it is your music.
When it comes to visual impression, the type of physical packaging (ie: jewel case, eco-sleeve, digipak, etc.) is actually far less important than the overall quality and visual effect of the graphic design. The design is intended to evoke thought, emotion, interest and curiosity, and should compliment the music that is contained within on the CD. Again, think of it the same way as going to a job interview: What's on the outside gets seen and judged long before the what's on the 'inside' gets any consideration.
Of course there’s no crime in having a tight budget but it’s in your best interest not to make your CD project appear to have been produced on a tight budget… it you get what I’m meaning.
Eye-catching and effective graphic design doesn’t have to be elaborate or expensive and, often times, simple designs using the ‘less is more’ principle are the most appealing and memorable. As an example of this, take note of the cover image for "Drive She Said" (photo/design credit: Jared Robinson at Nebulus Entertainment).
So again, while image may not be ‘everything’ don’t devalue your music with a graphic design you can’t be proud of. Spend a little time thinking about what would suit your music and what is within your abilities (or budget) and then go to it!
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Precision Disc Manufacturing Corp. provides factory-direct CD manufacturing and CD duplication with eco-friendly print and packaging solutions from their location in Surrey, B.C. (a suburb of Vancouver), and ship daily to clients throughout the U.S. and Canada.
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Friday, September 18, 2009
The Pitfall With Identical Disc and Packaging Designs
Some designers like to re-use their front-cover artwork on their CD or DVD disc face. While it is very tempting to re-use the front-cover design for the sake of creating some continuity between the disc and the packaging, there is a pitfall that you need to be aware of:
Even though it's the same design, the colouration of the two prints may not "match".
Not everyone has the same expectation levels but, due to the fact some clients expect to see absolutely no difference in colour between the disc print and the packaging print, the situation needs to be explained.
1. The CD or DVD disc is going to be printed using a different machine than the one used to print the packaging.
The machinery for printing CD and DVD discs is very specialized, so a different printer would be used for printing your packaging materials.
(a) While four-colour process (CMYK) is the most common form of commercial printing, depending on the specific CD or DVD project there are a number of different CMYK printers that could be used. This includes CMYK digital printing, CMYK offset printing, CMYK inkjet printing, CMYK thermal printing, CMYK silkscreen printing.
(b) Different types of machines and technologies generally mean that the types (or brands) of ink will also be different.
2. Printing onto different substrates can lead to different results.
(a) A CD or DVD disc is made of non-porous plastic, thus it requires ink that dries through evaporation.The substrates for the packaging print are typically board-stock or paper-stock which are porous materials, which require ink that dries through absorption.
(b) The 'finish' of a CD or DVD disc is different than that of the substrates used for the packaging. Different finishes are going to affect how the print colours are represented.
Factoring in all of the differences as noted above, it is logical to conclude that printing a design using different types of printing technologies, inks, substrates, and finishes, will create different results. Or in other words... they may not match.
Now the question becomes, to what degree? Unfortunately there is no way of knowing in advance.
Depending on the type of printer being used for the specific project, it might be possible for the print operator to adjust the colour output to aid in creating as close a match as possible but there is still no guarantee as to what results can be achieved. In addition, some printers may charge for such efforts.
Better safe than sorry!
Getting hard-copy printed proofs is always a good way to protect yourself from unexpected colour issues. Better to spend a little bit of money to be sure of your print colouration than get your order and not be happy with the results.
Ultimately, the safest way to go is to create a unique design for the disc face.
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Precision Disc Manufacturing Corp. provides factory-direct CD and DVD manufacturing, print and packaging solutions to clientele throughout Canada and the United States from our offices and production facility in Surrey, British Columbia (B.C.) Canada.
Of particular interest is our line of eco-friendly packaging products which includes CD Sleeves, DVD Sleeves, and CD Digipak, DVD Digipak.
Visit our website for instant online quoting, or contact us with any questions or comments you may have.
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Even though it's the same design, the colouration of the two prints may not "match".
Not everyone has the same expectation levels but, due to the fact some clients expect to see absolutely no difference in colour between the disc print and the packaging print, the situation needs to be explained.
1. The CD or DVD disc is going to be printed using a different machine than the one used to print the packaging.
The machinery for printing CD and DVD discs is very specialized, so a different printer would be used for printing your packaging materials.
(a) While four-colour process (CMYK) is the most common form of commercial printing, depending on the specific CD or DVD project there are a number of different CMYK printers that could be used. This includes CMYK digital printing, CMYK offset printing, CMYK inkjet printing, CMYK thermal printing, CMYK silkscreen printing.
(b) Different types of machines and technologies generally mean that the types (or brands) of ink will also be different.
2. Printing onto different substrates can lead to different results.
(a) A CD or DVD disc is made of non-porous plastic, thus it requires ink that dries through evaporation.The substrates for the packaging print are typically board-stock or paper-stock which are porous materials, which require ink that dries through absorption.
(b) The 'finish' of a CD or DVD disc is different than that of the substrates used for the packaging. Different finishes are going to affect how the print colours are represented.
Factoring in all of the differences as noted above, it is logical to conclude that printing a design using different types of printing technologies, inks, substrates, and finishes, will create different results. Or in other words... they may not match.
Now the question becomes, to what degree? Unfortunately there is no way of knowing in advance.
Depending on the type of printer being used for the specific project, it might be possible for the print operator to adjust the colour output to aid in creating as close a match as possible but there is still no guarantee as to what results can be achieved. In addition, some printers may charge for such efforts.
Better safe than sorry!
Getting hard-copy printed proofs is always a good way to protect yourself from unexpected colour issues. Better to spend a little bit of money to be sure of your print colouration than get your order and not be happy with the results.
Ultimately, the safest way to go is to create a unique design for the disc face.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Precision Disc Manufacturing Corp. provides factory-direct CD and DVD manufacturing, print and packaging solutions to clientele throughout Canada and the United States from our offices and production facility in Surrey, British Columbia (B.C.) Canada.
Of particular interest is our line of eco-friendly packaging products which includes CD Sleeves, DVD Sleeves, and CD Digipak, DVD Digipak.
Visit our website for instant online quoting, or contact us with any questions or comments you may have.
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Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Why Not To Use Photoshop For Typesetting
Adobe Photoshop is world class graphic design software for photo/image processing, but it's not the best design tool for typesetting and line-art graphics that are destined for commercial printing... especially silkscreen printing spot colours.
We always recommend that clients process their photos/images in Photoshop and then place them into Adobe Illustrator or Adobe Indesign for assembly with design templates, line art graphics and text.
Why is that? The image shown below displays the problem.
The letter "A" on the left is line-art text from Illustrator and the letter "A" on the right is from Photoshop. They were both created using the same font and point size, and the image was saved at 300dpi which is the most common resolution for commercial print in the CD manufacturing and DVD manufacturing world.
As you can see, the Photoshop generated letter is noticably fuzzy... and this is because it is a bitmap image as opposed to line-art. Such fuzziness isn't too much of a problem for the large bold text in your design, but it can become problematic in smaller text and finer styles of fonts.
The fuzziness of text and graphics created in Photoshop can play havoc with the visual quality of silkscreen designs. What appears to be sharp and smooth on your computer screen turns into jagged and rough edges in the final print. On the other hand, line-art does provide sharp edges and smooth curves or silkscreen printing spot colours as well as all types of CMYK print.
Due to this (as noted above) we always recommend that you perfect your photos in Photoshop, save them in high-resolution form (such as a 300dpi .TIF) and then place them into your Illustrator or Indesign design page. The result will be sharper and cleaner text and graphics, which equates to higher overall visual quality and legibility.
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Precision Disc Manufacturing Corp. provides factory-direct CD and DVD manufacturing, print and packaging solutions to clientele throughout Canada and the United States from our offices and production facility in Surrey, British Columbia (B.C.) Canada.
Of particular interest is our line of eco-friendly packaging products which includes CD Sleeves and DVD Sleeves, and CD Digipak and DVD Digipak.
Visit our website for instant online quoting, or contact us with any questions or comments you may have.
We always recommend that clients process their photos/images in Photoshop and then place them into Adobe Illustrator or Adobe Indesign for assembly with design templates, line art graphics and text.
Why is that? The image shown below displays the problem.
The letter "A" on the left is line-art text from Illustrator and the letter "A" on the right is from Photoshop. They were both created using the same font and point size, and the image was saved at 300dpi which is the most common resolution for commercial print in the CD manufacturing and DVD manufacturing world.
As you can see, the Photoshop generated letter is noticably fuzzy... and this is because it is a bitmap image as opposed to line-art. Such fuzziness isn't too much of a problem for the large bold text in your design, but it can become problematic in smaller text and finer styles of fonts.
The fuzziness of text and graphics created in Photoshop can play havoc with the visual quality of silkscreen designs. What appears to be sharp and smooth on your computer screen turns into jagged and rough edges in the final print. On the other hand, line-art does provide sharp edges and smooth curves or silkscreen printing spot colours as well as all types of CMYK print.
Due to this (as noted above) we always recommend that you perfect your photos in Photoshop, save them in high-resolution form (such as a 300dpi .TIF) and then place them into your Illustrator or Indesign design page. The result will be sharper and cleaner text and graphics, which equates to higher overall visual quality and legibility.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Precision Disc Manufacturing Corp. provides factory-direct CD and DVD manufacturing, print and packaging solutions to clientele throughout Canada and the United States from our offices and production facility in Surrey, British Columbia (B.C.) Canada.
Of particular interest is our line of eco-friendly packaging products which includes CD Sleeves and DVD Sleeves, and CD Digipak and DVD Digipak.
Visit our website for instant online quoting, or contact us with any questions or comments you may have.
Thursday, September 3, 2009
CD and DVD Silkscreen Printing - Designing Without A White Flood
It's possible to use the shiny aluminum/silver disc surface colour in your design. Doing so can be very effective but it's important to understand how much room you actually have to work with.
Regardless of whether you are creating a design with 'positive' print (solid lettering and/or graphics printing on the silver background) or a 'negative' print (printing a solid colour that utilizes the disc's surface as the colour for your lettering and/or graphics) be aware that there are actually three different parts of the disc that can be printed onto:
A : The largest area is the aluminum/silver coloured area that holds the disc data/content.
B : Closer to the middle there is the "mirror band" which is a very shiny/reflect silver colour.
C : Surrounding the center hole there is an area which will either be clear plastic (as is generally the case with a CD disc) or additional shiny/reflective silver (which is generally the case with a DVD disc).
A replicated compact disc (CD) was used in the example shown above. In the left-hand column the example illustrates the process of printing a disc using a white flood (aka: white 'backprint') prior to printing the graphics. Most designers utilize the white flood print as it provides a clean white/neutral background for the graphics to be printed on as well as actually enhancing the colour of the printed graphics. This is much the same principle as painting the walls in your house... applying paint onto a white coloured wall provides a much better result than trying to apply paint to a dark coloured wall.
The example in the right-hand column shows what can happen if you create a design that utilizes the disc's surface as an element of your design (ie: no white flood) but not factoring in the three different components that make up the disc's surface. As you can see, the change in the background colour negatively affects the visual appeal and legibility of the design.
Avoiding The "Danger Area" In Your Disc Design
As noted above, there are actually three different parts of the disc that can be printed onto. If you'd like to utilize the aluminum/silver colour of the disc's surface in your design but avoid the hazards of any unsightly overlaps onto the mirror band and/or center section of the disc, the 'danger area' is within a 36mm diameter (18mm radius) of the center of the disc.
Important: By saying "center of the disc" it means measuring outward from the center of the center-hole in the middle of the disc... it does NOT mean measuring outward from the edge of the center-hole.
If you're creating a 'negative' print (printing a solid colour that utilizes the disc's surface as the colour for your lettering and/or graphics) the solid colour can still overlap the mirror band and center section of the disc... it's only the areas that knock-through to show the disc colouration that should be kept outside the 36mm diameter 'danger area'.
Getting The Best Of Both Worlds - Using A 'Custom' White Flood
It's possible to create a 'custom' white flood which allows you to be selective about what parts of your 'negative' print knock through to the silver of the disc and what parts knock through to the white flood. As shown in the example below, it doesn't matter that the "ABC123" lettering is inside the 'danger zone' because there's a white flood behind it, but the "@" symbol is well outside the danger zone so it can be knocked through to silver.
Depending on how many colours are in your design, your quoted price may not include a custom white flood should you require one. Please contact us to confirm.
Important: There are limitations to what can be effectively printed using a custom white flood. Small text/graphics, fine text/graphics, and very tight registration can pose problems and may not be printable. Additionally, when supplying your artwork that includes a custom white flood you must design the custom white as a distinctly separate colour (learn more about colour separations) and include a notation on your Order Forms that a custom white flood is required.
Precision Disc Manufacturing Corp. provides factory-direct CD and DVD manufacturing, print and packaging solutions to clientele throughout Canada and the United States from our offices and production facility in Surrey, British Columbia (B.C.) Canada.
Of particular interest is our line of eco-friendly packaging products which includes CD Sleeves, DVD Sleeves, CD Digipak and DVD Digipak. Visit our website for instant online quoting, or contact us with any questions or comments you may have.
Regardless of whether you are creating a design with 'positive' print (solid lettering and/or graphics printing on the silver background) or a 'negative' print (printing a solid colour that utilizes the disc's surface as the colour for your lettering and/or graphics) be aware that there are actually three different parts of the disc that can be printed onto:
A : The largest area is the aluminum/silver coloured area that holds the disc data/content.
B : Closer to the middle there is the "mirror band" which is a very shiny/reflect silver colour.
C : Surrounding the center hole there is an area which will either be clear plastic (as is generally the case with a CD disc) or additional shiny/reflective silver (which is generally the case with a DVD disc).
A replicated compact disc (CD) was used in the example shown above. In the left-hand column the example illustrates the process of printing a disc using a white flood (aka: white 'backprint') prior to printing the graphics. Most designers utilize the white flood print as it provides a clean white/neutral background for the graphics to be printed on as well as actually enhancing the colour of the printed graphics. This is much the same principle as painting the walls in your house... applying paint onto a white coloured wall provides a much better result than trying to apply paint to a dark coloured wall.
The example in the right-hand column shows what can happen if you create a design that utilizes the disc's surface as an element of your design (ie: no white flood) but not factoring in the three different components that make up the disc's surface. As you can see, the change in the background colour negatively affects the visual appeal and legibility of the design.
Avoiding The "Danger Area" In Your Disc Design
As noted above, there are actually three different parts of the disc that can be printed onto. If you'd like to utilize the aluminum/silver colour of the disc's surface in your design but avoid the hazards of any unsightly overlaps onto the mirror band and/or center section of the disc, the 'danger area' is within a 36mm diameter (18mm radius) of the center of the disc.
Important: By saying "center of the disc" it means measuring outward from the center of the center-hole in the middle of the disc... it does NOT mean measuring outward from the edge of the center-hole.
If you're creating a 'negative' print (printing a solid colour that utilizes the disc's surface as the colour for your lettering and/or graphics) the solid colour can still overlap the mirror band and center section of the disc... it's only the areas that knock-through to show the disc colouration that should be kept outside the 36mm diameter 'danger area'.
Getting The Best Of Both Worlds - Using A 'Custom' White Flood
It's possible to create a 'custom' white flood which allows you to be selective about what parts of your 'negative' print knock through to the silver of the disc and what parts knock through to the white flood. As shown in the example below, it doesn't matter that the "ABC123" lettering is inside the 'danger zone' because there's a white flood behind it, but the "@" symbol is well outside the danger zone so it can be knocked through to silver.
Depending on how many colours are in your design, your quoted price may not include a custom white flood should you require one. Please contact us to confirm.
Important: There are limitations to what can be effectively printed using a custom white flood. Small text/graphics, fine text/graphics, and very tight registration can pose problems and may not be printable. Additionally, when supplying your artwork that includes a custom white flood you must design the custom white as a distinctly separate colour (learn more about colour separations) and include a notation on your Order Forms that a custom white flood is required.
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Precision Disc Manufacturing Corp. provides factory-direct CD and DVD manufacturing, print and packaging solutions to clientele throughout Canada and the United States from our offices and production facility in Surrey, British Columbia (B.C.) Canada.
Of particular interest is our line of eco-friendly packaging products which includes CD Sleeves, DVD Sleeves, CD Digipak and DVD Digipak. Visit our website for instant online quoting, or contact us with any questions or comments you may have.
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
Silkscreen Printing on CD and DVD - Using Less Than 100 Percent Solid Colour
Precision Disc provides two disc printing options for our CD manufacturing and DVD manufacturing. One is CMYK Offset Printing and the other is Silkscreen Printing.
Silkscreen printing is a pretty 'old school' form of printing but just because it's old school doesn't mean it's not a highly effective method of printing CD and DVD discs. Unfortunately there aren't a lot of designers out there who seem to have any experience with silkscreen printing design, so that tends to cause delays and rejection of artwork files when it comes time for pre-press.
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When Silkscreen Printing, anything less than 100% solid colour will not have the solid, consistent and smooth appearance that you see on your computer monitor. This occurs in transparencies, drop-shadows, gradients, and other similar effects.
A side-by-side comparison is shown below of what is viewed on the computer monitor (shown on the left) against the actual Silkscreen Printed product (shown on the right). The imagery you are viewing was designed and printed based on two colours only (black ink printed on top of a solid white back-print). The 'grey' that is visible is not actually grey ink at all... it's a gradient created within the black print.
While the gradient in the design has a solid, smooth and consistent visual appearance when viewed on the computer monitor it will actually print as tightly packed series of 'dots'.
Why Does The Final Print Look Different Than What I See On My Computer Monitor?
To put it simply, the process of Silkscreen Printing is to push ink through a stencil that's imaged onto a fabric mesh... so it's going to have its limitations... and the 'dot pattern' relates to the limitations in the technology for imaging the design onto the printing Screens. Silkscreen Printing is definitely an 'old school' form of printing but when you understand both the strengths and limitations of this type of printing you can create extremely powerful designs that other printing technologies can't easily duplicate.
So... what if you really want solid, smooth and consistent print on your final product?
The answer is quite simple: Only design using 100% solid colours. Create a new colour separation for each individual colour in your design (to a maximum of 6 including the white backprint) and make sure the values are set to print at 100% solid colour. If you want to put emphasis on effects such as transparencies, drop-shadows, etc., perhaps it would be best to avoid Silkscreen Printing and, instead, design using CMYK values for our Offset CMYK Printer.
Here's how the 'dot pattern' works:
Let's say you want to create a shade of grey that is 50% of black (instead of printing grey on its own screen in 100% solid colour). This is called "half-tone". The only way for this to work is to create an illusion of the desired 'grey' colour by printing the 'black' ink in small dots which are spaced far enough apart as to allow the white background to be visible between the dots. This mix of black and white gives the illusion of the desired 'grey' colour. If you wanted a darker shade of grey (such as 70% of black) the dots would be spaced closer together to let less white show through. If you wanted a lighter shade of grey (such as 30% of black) the dots would be spaced further apart to let more white show through.
If you do want to create your design in this manner you don't have to create the dots yourself. Simply set the percentage of black (or whatever colour you want to use) to your desired percentage value and then our film ripping process will take care of the rest automatically.
Remember: As stated in our graphic design specification, the printable tonal range for anything printing at less than 100% solid colour is between 15% and 85%. If you use colours outside of that range the colours may not reproduce properly.
Precision Disc Manufacturing Corp. provides factory-direct CD/DVD manufacturing, print and packaging solutions to clientele throughout Canada and the United States. Of particular interest is our line of eco-packaging products which include CD Sleeves, DVD Sleeves, CD Digipak, and DVD Digipak.
Visit our website for instant online quoting, or contact us with any questions or comments you may have.
Silkscreen printing is a pretty 'old school' form of printing but just because it's old school doesn't mean it's not a highly effective method of printing CD and DVD discs. Unfortunately there aren't a lot of designers out there who seem to have any experience with silkscreen printing design, so that tends to cause delays and rejection of artwork files when it comes time for pre-press.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
When Silkscreen Printing, anything less than 100% solid colour will not have the solid, consistent and smooth appearance that you see on your computer monitor. This occurs in transparencies, drop-shadows, gradients, and other similar effects.
A side-by-side comparison is shown below of what is viewed on the computer monitor (shown on the left) against the actual Silkscreen Printed product (shown on the right). The imagery you are viewing was designed and printed based on two colours only (black ink printed on top of a solid white back-print). The 'grey' that is visible is not actually grey ink at all... it's a gradient created within the black print.
While the gradient in the design has a solid, smooth and consistent visual appearance when viewed on the computer monitor it will actually print as tightly packed series of 'dots'.
Why Does The Final Print Look Different Than What I See On My Computer Monitor?
To put it simply, the process of Silkscreen Printing is to push ink through a stencil that's imaged onto a fabric mesh... so it's going to have its limitations... and the 'dot pattern' relates to the limitations in the technology for imaging the design onto the printing Screens. Silkscreen Printing is definitely an 'old school' form of printing but when you understand both the strengths and limitations of this type of printing you can create extremely powerful designs that other printing technologies can't easily duplicate.
So... what if you really want solid, smooth and consistent print on your final product?
The answer is quite simple: Only design using 100% solid colours. Create a new colour separation for each individual colour in your design (to a maximum of 6 including the white backprint) and make sure the values are set to print at 100% solid colour. If you want to put emphasis on effects such as transparencies, drop-shadows, etc., perhaps it would be best to avoid Silkscreen Printing and, instead, design using CMYK values for our Offset CMYK Printer.
Here's how the 'dot pattern' works:
Let's say you want to create a shade of grey that is 50% of black (instead of printing grey on its own screen in 100% solid colour). This is called "half-tone". The only way for this to work is to create an illusion of the desired 'grey' colour by printing the 'black' ink in small dots which are spaced far enough apart as to allow the white background to be visible between the dots. This mix of black and white gives the illusion of the desired 'grey' colour. If you wanted a darker shade of grey (such as 70% of black) the dots would be spaced closer together to let less white show through. If you wanted a lighter shade of grey (such as 30% of black) the dots would be spaced further apart to let more white show through.
If you do want to create your design in this manner you don't have to create the dots yourself. Simply set the percentage of black (or whatever colour you want to use) to your desired percentage value and then our film ripping process will take care of the rest automatically.
Remember: As stated in our graphic design specification, the printable tonal range for anything printing at less than 100% solid colour is between 15% and 85%. If you use colours outside of that range the colours may not reproduce properly.
Precision Disc Manufacturing Corp. provides factory-direct CD/DVD manufacturing, print and packaging solutions to clientele throughout Canada and the United States. Of particular interest is our line of eco-packaging products which include CD Sleeves, DVD Sleeves, CD Digipak, and DVD Digipak.
Visit our website for instant online quoting, or contact us with any questions or comments you may have.
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