This is a brief
tutorial to help you get started with your graphic design for
Silkscreen Printing your CD or DVD discs. The information provided
here is based an assumption that you have a reasonable working
knowledge of graphic design terminology as well as Adobe
Illustrator or similar professional graphic design programs.
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.
"Example 1" shown below provides a side-by-side comparison 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 in 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.
"Example 2" shown below provides a closer look at what is viewed
on the computer monitor (shown on the left) against the actual
Silkscreen Printed product (shown on the right). 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 product? T
he 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 specifications, 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.
|
