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.

Creating Colour Separations For CD and DVD Silkscreen Printing

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.

One of the most common problems we encounter with silkscreen print designs relates to creating colour separations. In other words, you must be able to separate and isolate each individual colour from every other colour in the design, which is hugely important because each individual colour gets printed on its own screen. The easiest way to tackle this is to design each colour on its own design layer.

Looking at the layer menu in the sample design shown below you will see that the design is based on three colours (109C Yellow, 072C Blue, and White) with each individual colour being isolated on its own design layer.

Even though there are seven horizontal yellow stripes in the sample design, if they are all the same colour (in this case they are all Pantone 109C) they all must go on the same design layer. If one of the yellow stripes was a different shade than the rest (for example, if one of the stripes was Pantone102C) it would have to go on a design layer of its own, and the design would then be comprised of four separate colours (109C, 102C, 072C and White) instead of three. You will also note that the design layers are positioned below the template layer - which is exactly how it should be done.

Important Things To Remember:
 

1. There are a maximum of six colours that can be silkscreen printed on your disc (including white). At Precision Disc our quotations normally include up to five colours in the price (including white).

2. Your design colours must always be specified as Pantone "Solid Coated" colours. The correct designation for Solid Colour colours is "C" - for example "Pantone 109C".

3. Unless you are experienced with silkscreen printing design you should not design using transparencies or other effects that use less than 100% solid colour; such as drop shadows, gradients and half-tones. Even though these effects look smooth and solid when viewed on your computer monitor they actually print as a dot pattern and are very difficult to work with.