What is white ink printing?
White ink is an extra layer printed under or alongside the colors on clear, metallic, kraft or dark materials, because CMYK inks are see-through and include no white.
What it means for your file
In the file it is a separate spot color, usually named “White”, set to overprint and drawn wherever the design should be white or opaque. Under colors on garments it is called an underbase.
An example
On a label printed on clear film, a red logo with nothing under it is see-through and looks dark against the bottle. So the file has a white layer, a spot color named “White” set to overprint, filled wherever the logo is, and the red prints on an opaque base. Where the design should stay clear, there’s no white.
A common mistake
Making white a CMYK color, C0 M0 Y0 K0, instead of a named spot color. To a press that means no ink, so nothing prints. White has to be its own spot swatch, named exactly as the printer asks and set to overprint, so it doesn’t knock out the colors printed with it.
How to fix it
If your printer sent the file back saying “There’s no white ink layer,” the fix page has the step-by-step way to do it yourself, and a fixed price if you’d rather have it done.
Where else it comes up
All print terms in the glossary, or run your file through the free print-ready checker.
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