White Ink File Setup in Photoshop

White Ink File Setup in Photoshop

Photoshop

Training video

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1lVe-vIePaZjrYm00uyd6izNSOhzr1r7D/view?usp=sharing

You can use photoshop when we do not have vector artwork for assets.

The main difference between InDesign/illustrator vs. photoshop: it’s all about the channels. Example file: Jennifer Feather cards https://drive.google.com/open?id=1VQDPwZTnvnxO0a6paOa0gH7H8vOjq9zw

The Client Ideally Provides:

  • Regular artwork
  • White Ink/ Spot UV artwork on another page in black ink- this is so we can assign a spot color to the artwork.

Steps to set up white ink

  1. Open the files in photoshop.
  2. Focus on the image that is white ink.
  3. Select the layer, press command+A then cmd+C.
  4. Go to the regular artwork file. And go to the Channels palate.
  5. Make sure nothing is selected, then click on the small menu button and press “New Spot Channel.”
  6. Name the spot channel either:
    1. OKI- “SpotColor_White”
    2. Indigo- “White Ink”
    3. Press OK.
  7. Press cmd+shift+V while selecting the channel that has your spot color layer.
  8. Save the file. Press cmd+shift+S to do a save as.
    1. File type: tiff. Name file. Press OK
    2. **in tiff options you have two options to choose from depending on what looks better.
      1. Check “save transparency” - this will add some color to the file wherever there is white ink on top. This option can either help or hurt the art. The artwork will change, but the final product may look better. The photo shows what happened to the final product with saving transparency.
      2. Uncheck “save transparency” - this will leave the artwork intact but it may not look as good in the final product.
  9. With the save tiff file, you can now bring it into InDesign to do final layout and then export a PDF with standard settings.
  10. Photo examples of the effect of checking and unchecking “save transparency” when saving as a tiff file.

Example of what happened with color on white ink:File:


Notice that with “save transparency” unchecked the file looks very similar to the original art. The final product doesn’t look good with this setting unchecked though.


This is the final product with “save transparency” unchecked. Lose a lot of detail.



This is the final product with “save transparency” checked. Much better detail but it does add density where the artwork did not have it originally. The client chose to go with this photo with “save transparency” checked.



Here we just put different colors and put a white ink box behind half of it. Notice how different the color ends up. This wouldn’t be obvious unless you had sections of print go on top of the white ink and off the white ink with the same color. This is why the “save transparency” can help with these scenarios.

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