To ‘spot print’ means to direct a certain ink or layer in your design to a particular head, or heads, on your printer.
Example 1
If you have a red layer in your design, and you want that red to be printed with 100% of ink from the magenta head, and 100% of ink from the yellow head to ensure you are getting the best red your printer can achieve, you can.
Example 2
If you are using inhibitors, adhesives, and penetration inks, you need to be able to specify where in the design these print.
Inhibitors
Inhibitors are printed onto vinyls and prevent it from rising when the vinyl is heated, thus creating an embossed feel. In the snapshot below, the grout may be printed with an inhibitor, which would stop it from expanding in the heater. This would produce the tile affect simulated here in AVA 3D Designer.
Adhesives
These are only printed where you want to apply elements which cannot be printed, such as glitter.
Penetration Ink
This special fluid wets the fabric before the ink is printed, allowing the ink to soak further into the fabric. Think of a droplet of water falling onto a dry sponge. It will sit on top of it. But if a droplet falls onto a wet sponge, it is absorbed instantly.
When you are doing test prints with penetration ink, you should be looking for the design to be seen on the back of the fabric. The reverse should be a crisp representation of the design, i.e. not blurred.
Example 3
As technology advances, we are seeing more and more special inks appear in digital printing. Florescent and metallic inks will all become more widely used in the years to come, and will be spot printed.
Set up your Settings
Go to AVA Menu > Settings > Printer and under Printing Mode, tick Overprinted Image and Spot Printing Layers as shown in the snapshot below:
- Overprinted Image (using the CMS Controller Printer Profile) - uses AVA’s default colour matching and proofs colours through your printer’s profile. If this is switched off, AVA assumes you wish to spot print every layer.
- Omit Spot Printing Layers from Overprinted image while printing - automatically hides the spot printed layers upon printing.
Note: If this option is not ticked, spot printed layers need to be made invisible prior to printing. This means the colour palette will not be visible when printing from the Layout Window.
- Spot Printing Layers - switches spot printing on. If this is not switched on, spot printing will not work.
- Into Overprinted image - only used when going through a third party.
Turn on your Gamut Warnings
This lets you see clearly which layers are set as spot printing layers, and which are not.
- Go to AVA Menu > Inspectors > Warnings…
- Tick Gamut Warnings on Colour Blocks.
Set the Custom Overprint Picker in ColourSys
You need to set your colour picker to the Custom Overprint Picker in ColourSys.
- Go to ColourSys Menu > Settings > Colour Picker, and select Custom Overprint.
- Open the picker (Colour Menu > Pick) and set your Custom Overprint and Tone DB at the top of the picker, then close the window by clicking OK.
Recolour the layers you wish to print as Spot
In the Layers Palette in AVA, ⌥ (option key) click on the colour block to open the Custom Overprint Picker. In the snapshot below, and the red layer is being assigned to the magenta and orange heads on the printer.
Notice the Spot Print icon appear on the right hand side of the colour block in the Layers Palette.
Note: You may have to increase the width of your colour chips in the Layers Palette to see this icon.
Colour any other layers you want to direct to specific heads on the printer.
Locate the Spot Print column in the Layers Palette. You may have to stretch the Layers Palette wider to find this for the first time. It can then be repositioned to more accessible location within the Layers Palette.
Click on the Printer icon next to the layer you want to spot print
Activate the layer and make it invisible, then print the file through your normal workflow.
Note: It is important to make the spot printing layers invisible prior to printing. This is because, when files are printed, anything that is visible is combined to an image, and printed through the profile. Because spot layers are printed differently, if they are left visible at the time of sending the file to print, that part of the design will be printed twice.
The printed file
If you open the printed document back into AVA, you can see how the spool file is composed.
A composite image is created from all the layers which were visible at the time of printing, and this image is tagged with the printer profile from the AVA CMS Controller.
Beneath the image, are 8 addition channels. These hold the information for the spot printed layers, and represent the 8 channels from the picker, and essentially the heads in the printer.
In the spool file, activate the layers and open the Info Window. Click on the information with the Pipette Tool, and the Info Window will show you the density of tone on each of those layers. You should notice this is an exact representation of the tones you used in the Custom Overprint Picker.