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Prepare Your File for Iridesse Printing
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How to Set Up Your Print-Ready File for Iridesse Inks

To achieve the best possible results with Iridesse and metallic inks, it’s important to prepare your artwork correctly. Following these guidelines will help ensure sharp reproduction, accurate metallic effects, and a smooth production process.

Cover Design Best Practices

For the highest quality reproduction of metallic and specialty inks:

  • Keep Iridesse elements as vector artwork wherever possible for crisp, sharp results.
  • Avoid using very small reversed (knocked-out) metallic text.
  • Avoid overly fine details, as they may fill in during printing.
  • Allow for slight trapping where metallic inks meet other colours.
  • Do not position Iridesse elements directly on or across spine folds.

Setting Up Your File

Spot colours should be supplied in one of the following ways:

  • As a separate layer in Adobe InDesign.
  • As a spot colour channel in Adobe Photoshop.

All Iridesse spot colours should be set to Overprint.

Creating Your Iridesse Ink Swatches

Each Iridesse ink must be created as a named spot colour swatch in your artwork, rather than a CMYK colour, and should be set to 100% tint.

The CMYK values assigned to the spot swatch are generally not important. Our printer identifies the ink by its spot colour name, making accurate naming essential.

Use the following spot colour names exactly as shown, with the first letter capitalised:

  • Gold
  • Pink
  • Silver

Note: Spot colours will not display as metallic on screen. They will appear as solid colours in your PDF and will only appear metallic once printed.

Exporting Your Print-Ready PDF

Before submitting your final PDF, please ensure that:

  • 3 mm bleed is included on all sides.
  • Crop marks are included.
  • Spot colours are preserved.
  • Spot colours are not converted to process (CMYK) colours.

Need Help?

If you’re unsure whether your file has been set up correctly, our team is happy to help. Getting the file preparation right before printing will ensure your Iridesse metallic effects look their best and your finished book achieves the premium result you’re aiming for.

Ngā mihi,
The Team at YourBooks