Océ Arizona 350 GT. Number: 22 Issued by: ODGS S & S, Vancouver December 11, How to Use the Spot Layer Tool for White Ink Workflow

Transcription

1 Océ Arizona 350 GT Application Bulletin Number: 22 Issued by: ODGS S & S, Vancouver December 11, 2008 How to Use the Spot Layer Tool for White Ink Workflow The Océ Arizona 350 GT User Manual provides an extended explanation of the White Ink Workflow in Chapter 8. It assumes that the user has some experience with graphics applications such as Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop and with Onyx software. This document provides a simplified method to print with white ink that uses these applications but does so in a more basic manner. It will guide you through a simple tutorial that shows you how to prepare an image for quick and easy white ink print production that uses spot data rather than a white flood layer (as presented in the Quickstart example in the User manual). It will show you how to isolate the white area of your image in Illustrator so that it will be recognized by Preflight s Spot Layer Tool as an Underlay Fill and then printed as white by the printer. The User manual documents three approaches to white ink workflow with the Océ Arizona 350 GT printer: Flood Fill Layer - uses the Flood Fill Layer Configuration in the printer. Onyx Spot Layer Tool - generate the white spot data in ProductionHouse. Spot Data (pre-defined) - spot data is created in an image editing application. In this tutorial you will use the Onyx Spot Layer Tool to work with a mask that will let you define an area to not print with ink. You must use a media profile that has at least one layer defined as a white spot channel for this to work properly (see How to Create a Media in the User manual). How to Specify White Areas in an Image In cases where there are white objects within the image, it can be difficult to create a spot layer with white ink because in terms of CMYK printing, white objects do not contain image data. If you were to print an image like the example here on a white media, the ghost will not be printed but will appear white since the media is white. However, if you need to print this image on a colored or transparent media the ghost must be printed with white ink and a white ink underlay is needed to improve opacity for transparent media and to improve color accuracy on a colored media. You can use the Spot Layer Tool to print white ink in these areas, but will need to prepare a simple mask in Illustrator prior to printing. The mask will determine the area that you do NOT want to print. The following tutorial will demonstrate how to ensure that white areas print with white ink. Page 1 of 8

2 Why You Need a Mask to Specify White with the Spot Layer Tool If you were to print the sample image on a red colored media without first creating a mask for the Spot Layer Tool to work with, the image will appears as follows: Problem: The ghost and the background take on the red of the colored media because there is no data associated with the white ghost and therefore no ink was printed in that area. Also the reproduction of the other colors will be affected by the under laying red background. Solution: One solution to this problem (assuming you want to end up with a white ghost and you need to print on colored or transparent media) is to create a mask in Illustrator that you can select with the Spot Layer Tool. This mask will define the boundary of the image and allow you to print the whole image area with white ink on one or two printer layers. Then you can print the other colors on another printer layer. The ghost will appear as white and there will be a white ink layer under the image area. The rest of this tutorial will explain how to achieve this solution. How to Add a Mask to the Image in Illustrator The Spot Layer Tool in Preflight can make spot color data, and in some cases it may be the preferred method of spot layer creation. For this simple tutorial you will create a colored background in Illustrator and then select it in the Spot Layer Tool section of Preflight to determine the area to not print ink. To ensure that this background works in Preflight you must choose a color that does not appear in your image. 1. In Illustrator, open an eps, ps, pdf or ai file that contains some areas of white. If you want to add raster data to the file (or use a raster file instead of vector), click on File / Place and browse to a raster (e.g., TIFF, PSD, BMP or JEG). 2. Select the Rectangle Tool and create a box around the area you would like to mask, or around the Placed image. Page 2 of 8

3 3. Make sure this new rectangle is selected and then select the Fill swatch located at the bottom of the Illustrator toolbar. This will fill the rectangle with the current color. 4. Double-click on the swatch to bring up a dialog box that will allow you to set the color of this rectangle that you will use for your mask. For this example we have used mauve (composed of 13% Cyan and 23% Magenta). Make sure that the selected color does not appear anywhere in your image. 5. With the rectangular box still selected, choose Object / Arrange / Send to Back to place the box behind your image data. It is not necessary to choose Overprint attributes. The prepared image file will look similar to the example below. 6. Save this file as either an EPS or PDF. Page 3 of 8

4 How to Prepare the Image with Preflight s Spot Layer Tool 7. In Preflight select a media that has at least one spot white layer. 8. Open the file you saved in Step Select the Color Corrections tab. 10. Click on Tools and then select the Spot Layer Tool. 11. Click on Enable Spot Color Generation. Note: If the Enable checkbox won't activate (the green arrow does not appear in the box), the media you used to open the job has not been configured with the Quality-Layered print mode. Create or Edit your media to support spot ink in Media Manager before you open the job in Preflight (see the Océ Arizona 350 GT User Manual for instructions or download a white ink media model from the web site). Page 4 of 8

5 The Underlay Fill Opacity slider will allow you to print white across the whole image. Before doing that, you will want to use the Set Mask tool to create a mask that defines the area where you do not want white to print. 12. Click on the Set Mask drop-down menu and select Pick Color. 13. Take the Pick Color eyedropper tool into the image area and click on the portion of your image that has been prepared with the mauve mask color to choose it. Page 5 of 8

6 14. After you pick the mask color the image has following appearance. 15. Next, grab the slider for Underlay Fill and drag to the desired opacity, typically 100%. This will print a solid white underlay fill that will include the ghost object. Page 6 of 8

7 16. Once Underlay Fill has been set, the image will appear as follows. Note that the Spot color shown in the preview will be that of the Spot color designated in Media Manager for this particular media. When you print the image the masked area shown here as purple will print as a white fill on the spot white layer(s) and then the other colors will print on the CMYK layer(s). The ghost will appear as white because none of the other colors print in that area. 17. Use Choke when you want to eliminate white from peeking out of the edge of your image. Choke effectively shrinks the area that will print as white. When using Spot Layer Tool for masking purposes, we recommend a value of 2 or 3. Page 7 of 8

8 18. Once you have performed these actions, return to the Preview window and chose Apply to ensure that your changes take effect. 19. Go back to the Print window and submit the job to RipQueue for processing. 20. When job processing has successfully completed, send it to the Arizona 350 GT printer. Note: When the print job processing is complete, you can right-click on the job, select Printer Settings and then Define Layers if you want to change which of the three print layers will contain the white spot data. You can also set it up so that the white spot data prints on two layers if you want more opacity. 21. After the job is transferred from the RipQueue to the printer, select the Layers button in the printer s Job Control module to see a graphical representation of the Print Layers. This allows you to verify the layer order. In this example, the white spot color area you defined is present in both the Bottom and Middle layers and the colored image data is in the Top layer. Page 8 of 8