The Mimaki UJF-3042 series is Your Print Specialists Printastic product for August. Inspired by our customers, we’ll be taking a closer look at what can be achieved with the UJF-3042FX. First up, the amazing printing power of white ink.
Not just CMYK…
The majority of printing is usually done on a white base material therefore allowing for a vibrant image with any white parts of the design fulfilled by the white substrate. But what happens when you need to print on a clear or coloured substrate? This is where white ink comes in very handy.
Using white ink as an under print
When printing on a clear substrate, the image can lack vibrancy when compared to printing on a white base. The Mimaki UJF-3042 series allows for a white under print to be put down as a basis for the design. Using the Special Colour functions in Rasterlink 5 we can choose the white under print to completely cover the material or just the chosen design/pixels. The images remain bright and vivid without compromising the artistic design or materials used.
White ink on a coloured substrate
The colour replacement setting in Rasterlink 5 is used when white is needed on a clear or coloured substrate as part of the design. As you know when printing onto a white surface, we do not need to worry about any white areas but what if we were to print on to a red or clear substrate? Anything white will now be red or transparent as this is the base colour. To combat this, a little work is required to manipulate the artwork so we can print white successfully. To do this, we change any white areas to magenta in Illustrator. We then use the Colour Replacement function in Rasterlink to change this to white.
Using white ink to create a frosted finish
White ink can also be used effectively to create a direct print frosted effect without the use of vinyl. By using colour replacement to change our design to 50% white in Rasterlink, we are able to print an intricate frosted design on acrylic. This is great for use creatively but can also be used to create stunning signage displays.
