Clear Dry Ink

PacBlue Printing brings you the ultimate in design flexibility, with vibrant, high-definition image quality, a wide colour gamut - and the digital design freedom to be clear- with clear dry ink. Think frost on a window or the see-through beauty of a crystal and you’ll understand the dramatic, eye-catching design effects you can create with clear dry ink. The following section is filled with tips and techniques of how you can achieve stunning results with the Xerox Colour 1000 Press' new clear dry ink capability.

What can I do with Clear Dry Ink?

With clear dry ink you can apply a clear effect, so you can address specific areas of your printed piece or flood the entire sheet, enabling you to:

• Highlight images for visual variety, making them “pop” off the page
• Draw attention to a headline or variable text
• Highlight photos, logos or variable images
• Simulate pearlescent or metallic appearance
• Apply digital watermarks to add artistic effects or enhance security
• Enhance print quality of textured stocks
• Add an extra protective layer to an entire sheet
• Give the same effect that a spot varnish creates in offset printing

Have you ever wished you could get the great effect of offset printing with spot varnish when you are doing a short run? Well, now with PacBlue's latest technology you can

Top four techniques for designing with clear

Once you understand the basic ways you can use clear dry ink to differentiate your printed pieces, you can experiment to see which technique adds the most impact.

• Spot Treatment - You can specify clear dry ink to print only in specifically designated areas of a printed piece. This has the effect of highlighting and drawing attention to that part of the design, such as an area of an illustration or important text. It can also provide additional visual interest of enhancing varied textures on a single printed surface. Not only does this add interest, but it also gives your piece a more high-end, polished look.

Spot over a photograph - Add clear dry ink to a photograph and make it jump off the page, or designate certain areas of the photograph to highlight its features. Give your photos a noticeable sheen. You can also add a texture over a photograph, giving the illusion of dimension.

Spot over a solid colour -  By adding clear dry ink over a solid colour, you can increase the depth and overall sheen of that colour, giving it a little lift off the page and catching attention. This effect works best when clear dry ink is applied over lighter colours and is a great way to create subtle, interesting patterns and also to show off your graphics. Mimic a subtle tinted varnish effect by creating a design with a light tint of a colour and then add spot clear dry ink on top of that. The tinted effect can be used on its own as a design element, or over text and images to give them extra attention getting power. With the clear dry ink capabilities presented by the Colour 1000 Press and clever use of spot treatment, you have another creative way to direct focus on the important areas of your printed pieces.

• Flood Coating - To “flood” your printed piece with clear dry ink is to cover the whole sheet with it. Flooding can have many benefits. It adds a soft finish to your entire piece, giving it an offset like appearance. It provides an even sheen that adds depth to photos and a smooth consistent look across an image. Flooding can also help to protect your applications, almost adding a layer of sealant, especially helpful for direct mail and other pieces that are prone to wear from handling. Flood coating with clear dry ink also enables the Colour 1000 Press to evenly print on textured papers for better digital image quality on this type of stock.

• Metallic/Pearlescent Effect - Introducing a sheen of clear dry ink over pantone metallic colours simulated in CMYK can produce a metallic effect, making your design shine. A metallic effect also adds elegance to text in your printed pieces, as well as creates the appearance of metal on objects.

• Watermark - Using clear dry ink is a great way to print watermarks on your pieces. These subtle, authenticating marks can provide notice for copyrighted materials or add a graphic element to discourage copying of coupons or tickets. Watermarks can repeat across the entire page and are a nice way to add a soft graphic element to your design to quietly reinforce your message or evoke a mood.

Discover!

Paper choice plays a critical role when designing with clear dry ink. To achieve the highest sheen possible, it is important to chose a paper with a matte or satin finish. Your paper choice will also influence the effect flood coating has across the page. A flood treatment of clear applied over a photo will show off your image with a consistent, even sheen for an eye pleasing finish on a variety of substrates.

Setting up your files

Many of the effects mentioned above can be applied by our colour department specialist right at the printing stage. Without extensive time involvement we can add clear dry ink to all text or photos on a page or we can also flood an entire page. You can also integrate clear dry ink right into your own original design, the choice is yours.

Achieve the most vibrant and desired effects by setting up your files in Adobe Photoshop, InDesign and Illustrator.

• InDesign files

1. Add a new layer in the layers pallet.

• Name the new layer.
• The clear layer should be the very first layer at the top.

2. Add a new colour in the swatches pallet and name it. We use the name Clear. Important: The swatch name could be anything you want it to be as long as you are consistent and use the same name throughout all other files you might bring into your InDesign file. Also, the name is case sensitive. We suggest to use the name Clear simply because it makes sense.

• Designate the Colour Type as Spot.
• Set the Colour Mode to CMYK: 0/100/0/0
• Note: It does not matter which colour you choose, as long as the one you choose is set to 100%.

3. Draw a shape or select text that will receive clear dry ink. Make sure all elements to print with clear are situated on the clear layer.

• Fill your shape with the new Clear colour swatch.
• Select Window > Attributes > Overprint Fill and/or Stroke. This must be checked for every element to print with clear dry ink.

• Bringing in graphics from Adobe Illustrator

1. Copy and paste a graphic from Illustrator into your InDesign document. Note: Vector graphics that are created in Adobe Illustrator can be copied and pasted into InDesign and designated to print with clear dry ink as a watermark or to print over colours or photographs.
2. Designate the fill and/or line to be Clear.
3. Move all elements to be printed in clear dry ink to the clear layer.
4. With the graphic selected, select Window > Attributes > Overprint Fill and/or Stroke.

Questions? Want to know more how to work with Clear Dry Ink? You'll want to give our Sales Department a call at +1.604.714.3288 to request your own free copy of the Clear Dry Ink ~ Design Guide.