Prepare a color chart for metallic printing

Do you have a machine capable of printing with "Metallic silver" ink ? Here's how to create color swatches with metallic colors with Coraye.

For the purposes of this tutorial, we used an Epson SC-S80600 printer using 9 inks + 1 "Metallic Silver" ink to "metallic" the colors.

The exercise consists of creating a metallic PANTONE C color chart

For nesting and printing we used the RIP Caldera v14

Creation of the color chart and export in pdf format

This first step is described in the chapter "Preparing to print and cut a color chart":

pagePrepare to print and cut a color chart

Import the pdf into Illustrator

Once the swatch is generated, import it into Illustrator. We have created a 45 pages color chart in A4 size, containing 60 PANTONE Colors per page.

Create a layer containing the Metal Silver ink layer

Duplicate the main layer

Rename both layers, then deselect the main layer we named "Swatch Book" We are going to work only on the layer that we named "Metal".

Management of the percentage of "Metallic silver" ink used to create the metallic effect.

The first step is to create a new "Metal" shade defined in spot color.

Link to help you create a new shade in Illustrator: https://helpx.adobe.com/illustrator/using/using-creating-swatches.html

It is important to define this shade in spot color

The CMYK value with 50% black will only be used for display and will not allow you to manage the amount of Metallic ink.

Metallic ink percentage management

When the shade is created, a window will appear that will allow you to define the percentage of metallic ink: In our case, the value to obtain the desired rendering is 50%.

Creation of the areas on which we will apply the metallic ink

Removal of texts on the "Metal" layer

Since we don't want to "metallize" the texts, we will remove them from the "Metal" layer To do this, select all the texts with the option: Select > Object > All text objects

Delete selected texts

There are only the objects that you want to "metallize"

Creation of the areas on which we will apply the metallic ink

To select the areas on which we will apply the Silver Metal ink, we will use the "magic wand" tool with a tolerance set to 100%

Select one of the patches with the "magic wand" tool Once all the patches have been selected, assign the "Metal" shade.

All gray "Metal" patches will correspond to "metallic" areas In our example, all the color patches and the Coraye logos will be metallic.

Overprint management

To allow mixing of the "Metallic Silver" ink with the other inks, it is necessary to print in overprint mode. To do this, you have to select the two layers (Swatch Book and Metal) Display the "Attributes" window and check "Overprint Fill"

o display the "Object Option" window in Illustrator: Tab: Windows > Output > Attributes

Change the order of layers

When you are going to display the pdf of the color chart, by default you will display the first layer (except if you simulate the overprint). If you want to display the colored patches rather than the gray patches, position the "Swatch Book" layer at the top.