File Preparation: Clear Vinyl/Plastics File Preparation

Clear Vinyl/Plastics File Preparation

In most aspects, preparing digital art for printing on clear vinyl, styrene, static cling or similar UV-printable substrates is the same as preparing for any other commercial printing project.

Of course, the primary difference is that the substrate is either completely transparent or highly translucent – which allows light to pass through it, where opaque vinyls or paper substrates reflect light from their surface. This becomes important because most conventional PMS and process printing inks are translucent in nature. For this reason it is important to define your expectation of what the final piece should look like.

For pieces that are intended to be translucent, you can get a fair idea of what your piece will look like by printing some inkjet proofs on widely-available inkjet transparency media. However, pieces that are intended to have some "opaque" areas and some transparent or translucent areas can be a little trickier to visualize before the piece is actually produced on-press. Fortunately, our Sales Reps have a great deal of experience with these types of projects and will gladly discuss the project with you and provide finished samples of similar projects to help you gain an understanding of the possibilities and limitations of this type of project.

Projects that require an "opaque" Litho White printer underneath the process inks most often require the creation of a CMYK + Spot Color DCS (Desktop Color Separation) image file. Our prepress techs are well-versed in this procedure and can create these files for you if the desired effect is clearly communicated. If you prefer to create these files yourself, consult the Adobe PhotoShop™ Help/Tutorial menu and select the in-depth "Spot Color" tutorial, which is also available online at Adobe.com.

With this type of project, it's especially important to be familiar with the limitations of "opaque white" (or flash white) inks and aware that multiple passes through the press can be required, depending upon the desired degree of opacity. The "down side" to this is that it can substantially increase the cost of you project. It's also worth noting that each pass through the press can result in slight distortion of the substrate – which can result in minor registration problems. When this occurs, there could be a white "halo" where you would ideally expect to be a 1-to-1 registration of the Litho White printer and the process image.

As always, we recommend that you talk to your Sales Rep about your project and feel free to contact our Digital Prepress Department with any specific technical questions.

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