The concept is based on the idea that if you print four-colour over silver, be that ink, foil or substrate, you can create a huge palette of metallic colours. In the case of printing over a silver ink, the process can produce hundreds of metallics using a four-colour-plus-silver press.
If you're thinking 'that sounds familiar,' you're right. Leeds-based MetalFX offered a similar system until owner Ciba shut it down at the end of 2008, leaving users without support or a source for the silver ink.
Color-Logic has emerged to fill that gap, with the expert assistance of MetalFX developer Richard Ainge. Ainge is technical director working with US-based colour technology specialist Mark Geeves, who is sales and marketing director. There is no connection with the old firm, aside from Ainge, who wasn't involved in the decision to close it.
"Everyone has this thing with us initially about MetalFX," says Geeves. "But once you get in front of customers to explain, they understand."
While some printers may still feel burned by the demise of MetalFX, there are others who point out that CMYK over silver is nothing new. But it's not so much the process itself that's the clever part – it's the way that process is controlled.
"It's the ease of use that's crucial," says Geeves. "Getting the tools right for the designers took a long time."
Geeves cites a US printer who produced metallic special effects without Color-Logic. Despite the customer being delighted, the printer only used the process once.
"The time and effort made it too costly to do," he says. "The design took weeks and they had to press proof it to
verify the colour.
"Printers' previous experiences give them a perception that special effects are difficult and expensive. They all have one job they show that they have never produced commercially. Our system takes away the guesswork," claims Geeves.
Those tools are a set of plug-ins for Adobe Creative Suite and QuarkXPress that put metallic tints into the colour palettes. When designing, you pick a Color-Logic metallic, just like you would any other spot or special colour. It's the same when making separations in Photoshop, for reproducing metallic subjects the separations are built keeping silver ink out of deep shadows and specular highlights. Beyond that it's possible to use layers, masks and colour pickers to precisely control metallics within photographic images, and to ensure a match with metallic specials.
At output, regardless of the number of metallic colours specified, the software converts all the specials down into their CMYK-plus-silver components, creating a five-colour file that can be handled by any workflow or RIP.
Swatch what happens
Designers can refer to a swatch book supplied by their printer to see what the end result will look like. A set of sample files include examples of the effects possible for text, tints, graphics and photos, plus a swatch with all the 250 colours in the palettes separated out to CMYK-plus-silver. These are used to set up the press(es) and as marketing material.
In addition to the 250 process metallic colours you can also create two special effects: Dimensional-FX and Watermark-FX, both of which use a combination of silver tints and solids to create design elements that appear to change colour with the viewing angle, and, when juxtaposed with areas without underlying silver, the colours appear and disappear.
While MetalFX was limited to offset litho, and to the application of four-colour process over a silver base ink, Color-Logic is designed more openly to help to tame the combination of metallics and process colour regardless of printing process and substrate. In addition to litho the firm has been working with digital and flexo vendors and at LabelExpo will reveal more, to be followed with further digital tie-ups before the end of the year.
It's been assumed that digital and metallic are mutually exclusive, but over the past couple of years the options have opened up. The most obvious is in solvent inkjet where Roland DG, INX and Mimaki have announced metallic inks.
Color-Logic was shown working with Roland DG at Ipex. An alternative to a metallic ink on a white substrate is its inverse, using a white ink on a metallic substrate. At LabelExpo, Color-Logic will be working with HP Indigo and Xeikon to show label printing solutions that produce metallic effects by combining metallic films with CMYK and white toner. This white ink and CMYK on a silver substrate technique is applicable for inkjet too.
Sparkling standards
The firm is working with RIP and workflow vendors to enable their systems to automatically identify and process its files. In the meantime a manual workaround can identify the silver separation, or if using white to create a right-reading negative of the silver, to create the white separation.
On-press, the silver is printed first, then the standard inks on top. You can even run to an ISO12647-2 specification, with added sparkle. Ainge says you can print over the silver in standard lay-down order of KCMY or, for a better black, CMYK, for which he recommends knocking out behind the black, and adding a 40% cyan behind.
Recommended density for the silver is 0.7D for polarised reading, which the firm recommends, or 0.3-0.35D for status T. Contrary to initial expectations, he says a thinner ink film produces the best results, and quicker drying.
Color-Logic offers two inks a standard 'leafing' pigment, and a premium 'non-leafing' pigment, which the firm says retains its lustre when coated or varnished. Although the Color-Logic inks aren't UV-cured, they can be over-printed with UV inks or with a UV-cured varnish.
The pigment in the silver ink, is aluminium and, as long as overall coverage doesn't exceed 40%, should be recyclable, which Ainge says wouldn't be the case with conventional gold metallics, which contain bronze that needs to be treated as heavy metal waste. Another benefit of the single silver he adds, is the ability to produce vignettes from silver to gold, which would be impossible with two inks.
As with the process inks, paper choice is down to the printer. Ainge recommends experimenting with your house coated, uncoated and silk grades, although a premium stock may provide additional lift. Running sheets from tests can be used as marketing materials and swatches for clients.
A Silver Printers licence is $1,495 (£950), which includes the test forms, marketing collateral, unlimited onsite seats of the design software, three seats of design software to offer to clients, two 1kg tins of the premium ink and a year's training and technical support. To check the process works with your kit, a basic Starter Kit with one can of ink and just the test form, is $250.
To comply with the terms of the site licence you need to submit test sheets to Color-Logic, after which you will be listed as an approved printer on its website. Designers who want to use the process approach a printer found via the site and buy the software from them for $150.
Ongoing costs are an annual support fee for the second and subsequent years of "around 10% of the initial site licence", and the Color-Logic standard silver base ink, which costs £23/kg for the standard and £45/kg for the best. The firm estimates that even with heavy coverage the yield is 2,000 B1 sheets per kg. Color-Logic's own ink prices compare to market rates of £12-£20/kg dependent on volume for leafing ink and £14.40-£26/kg (20-30%) more for non-leafing, which is not an excessive premium to pay for the benefits delivered to the printer and the designer by the system.
In conclusion, Color-Logic is offering a valuable tool to add sparkle to print that is affordable and achievable for the designer and the printer.
