Make Sure Your Prints Stay Printed
by Maricon Williams


 

What’s good in printing when you can not restore your print? It is supposed to reproduce images exactly as they are seen in the original. Nevertheless, there are complaints among customers that their prints are flaking off, fading or blotting. What must have caused this?

Printing is the process of reproducing prints. Its traditional type involves intaglio, lithography, relief printing and screen printing. Aforementioned complaints occur because of some inadequacies or inconsistencies.

Ink is one of the essential ingredients to an effective printing. There are numerous inks available in the market today. Standard colors may differ between its manufacturers. Thus, there is a need to consult the supplier about the ink you want to purchase and use. Most of the printing problems are brought about by the usage of the wrong ink.

Thus, it is important to know the nature of ink, its kinds and when to use it. There is a formulated type of ink for the various printing processes. Thus, ink for offset, letterpress, flexography, screen printing and rotogravure printing varies. Factors that need to be considered in choosing ink for your printing needs include the texture, absorbency, finish, printer type and the use of the material.

Inkjet printers have two types of ink. The first is the dye based ink which is a water soluble solution. The drawback though of this type of ink is that the image may appear dull. The second type is the pigmented ink. Though this can give off sharp images the drawback is that they can clog. This type is the most commonly used ink in inkjet printers.

Ink can be applied in different ways. You can use it for spot color. In this type of printing, colors are applied using separate plates with different images to adjoin color to a particular area. The second type is the duotone. Here, two halftone images are printed with two colors using different screen angles.

Tritone, another way of printing, is producing three halftone images in different angles. It is then printed over each other in three different colors. Quadtones, on the other hand, involves four halftone images at different screen angles. The printed product involves four different colors printed over the images.

Process color is a type of printing that uses the four process colors, cyan, magenta, yellow and black printed on top of each other. There is the high fidelity color or the Hi-Fi, a method that uses process ink colors to produce a wide variety of color.

Finally, there’s the prismatic ink, which is the blending of two or more colors in a printing unit. This will result to a color difficult to copy and produce.

One thing you should not neglect about ink is that you must test it. Testing can save both your time and money. In addition, you will be assured that your material is having the best look and quality!