The cover, printed on an HP Indigo 7900 on the 300gsm weight of the material, was designed by Gabriel Walsh of Capiche Design. The title poem depicts starlings as dull creatures until light shines upon them and they are transformed from starlings to birds of paradise. Mr Walsh spoke on the importance of a cover that best reflects the poems’ content stating, ‘The iridescent nature of the print substrate beautifully captures this notion, echoing the words of the poet while illustrating the beauty of the starling feathers.’

An Druideog was designed by Mr Walsh for Irish poet Ciarán MacAibhistín. It features a collection of poems which reflect the poet’s life as he approaches his twilight years.

Creative papers manager at Antalis Vicky Weatherington added, ‘Curious Metallics’ white gold was the perfect choice for the cover of An Druideog. It adds an extra dimension to the beautiful, abstract image of a starling that features on the cover. It’s a great example of how choosing the right substrate can help bring a project to life.’

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What’s now called embellishment or special effects used to be a group of purely post-press operations. These included lamination, spot or flood varnishing and foiling (hot or cold). Other eye-catching things have always had to be done in or on the press – if you wanted metallic colours you had to use a special ink or print on a metallised substrate; the same applied for fluorescent or other special colours.

Digital print has blurred those boundaries, bringing a number of ways of achieving the same or ‘close enough’ effects, combined with the flexibility and minimal set-up requirements characteristic of digital print. These also split into in-press effects and subsequently-applied effects.

Before looking at these in detail, it’s also worth noting that a sustainability argument is emerging for digital embellishment as an alternative to more conventional processes. This comes from Scodix, which makes stand-alone ‘embellishment presses’ (distributed in the UK by Friedheim) that can apply a wide range of decorative effects to printed sheets, with full digital flexibility in each.

Scodix carried out a lifecycle assessment of its digital foiling options which found that compared to conventional hot stamp foiling, its version reduces CO2e (CO2 equivalent) by 85%, fossil fuel usage by nearly 85%, and water consumption by 80% per B1 sheet. The study, carried out by EcamRicert, and Mérieux NutriSciences Companies, compared the enhancement of a single B1 sheet through to 100,000 B1 sheets using Scodix foil (175g) versus traditional foiling methods.

That’s only one of the options that Scodix offers and there’s no indication given that any of the other supported techniques offer comparable advantages. However, like any other form of digital printing, it seems likely that overall wastage of materials and energy is likely to be lower simply through the ability to only print or finish the number required.

The main argument in favour of these types of effects though is that they add impact to printed products and therefore margin to your work. Some you can only do if you bought the right press, though they could also be a factor in choosing a new one. There’s an increasing number of toner presses that offer additional colours which may include clear ‘varnish’, white, fluorescent and metallic colours, though usually only one or sometimes two at a time.

Plus-one – or more

Machines that offer a fifth colour include Xerox’s iGen line and Ricoh’s Pro C7200, also sold by Heidelberg as the Versafire EV (and about to be replaced by the Pro C7500, though we’ve not seen any specification for this yet). Kodak’s Nexpress and Nexfinity models could do this too, with options over where in the laydown sequence the fifth colour went, though both are now discontinued. Moving up to six colours brings in the popular Xerox Iridesse, and the more recent Fujifilm Revoria, while most HP Indigos can handle up to seven colours, though of course click charges go up in proportion with all extra colour presses. Xerox also offers a conversion kit for two-pass printing on its entry-level PrimeLink C9065/C9070, which potentially allows the use of up to eight colours, albeit with a complete change of toner cartridges between passes.

The exact choice of extra colours varies by manufacturer, but in addition to white – for use on coloured or transparent substrates – and clear – used to create flood or spot varnish effects – fluorescent or ‘neon’ colours are offered, particularly pink and sometimes yellow. These can replace or be mixed with their standard CMYK equivalents to expand the colour gamut for more eye-catching effects. A few offer metallic toners too, which again can be printed solid or mixed to provide novel colours and finishes.

After the event

Post-press options are more about foiling, spot varnish and various creative lamination processes, often in combination. A good entry-level choice here is foil-over-toner, a two-pass method that uses ‘real’ foil in a laminator like Vivid’s Matrix models or those from Caslon, Foliant (sold via IFS), Komfi (from Friedheim) or Autobond. Similar options also come from GMP and Intec, now part of the Plockmatic group.

An entry-level option for foil-over-toner is Vivid’s Matrix, seen here at a trade show

In these, the initial colour print is first laminated with a clear film, then printed again with the foil pattern in black toner on top of the film, before a second pass through the laminator transfers the foil to the partially melted black toner. It’s a more labour-intensive process but it works with a very wide range of foil types and doesn’t require special consumables.

Then there are the fully ‘digital’ embellishment devices that offer spot UV and/or foiling in a single operation. This category includes devices like Duplo’s B2 DuSense 8000, which is offered in various configurations providing spot UV, digital foiling or both, including a pre-treatment option for expanding the types of print that can be handled. It’s also possible to build up textured ‘3D’ effects with multiple passes, which the smaller B3 DuSense 810 also supports. An alternative is the B3+ Konica Minolta AccurioShine 3600, which uses technology from MGI, in which Konica Minolta holds a significant stake. It too can produce ‘dimensional’ effects.

At the top end of the digital embellishment market are the ranges from Konica Minolta/MGI and Scodix. These are dedicated industrial production devices that offer UV varnish and foiling, with Scodix offering a particularly wide range of foils and finished effects, while MGI’s line goes up to B1 sheet size in the form of the print-and-embellish AlphaJet that was formally launched in October 2022. Kurz is another player at the industrial end of the scale, having bought Steinemann, whose inkjet varnish and foiling systems it was already marketing as Digital Metal. These include the sheet-fed B2 DM-Smartliner for 2D flat varnishing and foiling and the DM-Maxliner for raised and textured effects.

Whether you’re just ready to dip a toe into digital embellishment and cautious with the investment, or know that you’ve got a ready market for it but need to be sure it’s good enough and fast enough to meet your customers’ needs, there should be something to suit and help your work shine.

Preparing files for embellishment

All digital embellishment processes require ‘artwork’ to control where the effects are applied. Usually this means creating additional layers in the originating applications and/or print PDFs, though some vendors offer DFE-based tools to create embellishment guides or colour substitutions from standard PDFs on-the-fly.

Andrew Bailes-Collins of Ultimate Technographics, which makes imposition, nesting and ganging software, has written a handy guide to preparing generic PDFs that should process correctly through most embellishment vendors’ DFEs and thus avoid some of the common pitfalls that require manual reworking in the prepress studio.

Called PDF Creation for Digital Embellishment, it covers the use of spot colours, layers, knock-out and overprint and choice of correct versions of PDF for hand-off. It’s available free from Ultimate Technographics’ website.

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With the market for personalised and short run garments going from strength to strength, and the demand for unique effects and styles continuing to grow, Soft Metallic has been designed to tick all the boxes for those looking to decorate a vast range of different garments and textiles with ‘the ultimate soft metallic feel.’

Soft Metallic is available by the metre in 500mm rolls, nine different colours and is lightweight at 62 micron. Two years of development has meant it should be easy to cut using traditional plotter/cutters.

It also described as ‘perfect’ for cotton, polyester and poly/cotton blends as well as performance fabrics that require that extra stretch flexibility from the transfer. The Soft Metallic transfers are applied at 150°c for 10 seconds, medium pressure and peeled cold, the process is suitable for sportswear, fashion, promotional, workwear and craft markets.

The product is also available in the UK from Ralawise and Pencarrie as part of its 2021 new product offering.

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Technology is improving for more efficient and sustainable production. Print plants are opting for automated production management, and waste control, even as the range of decorative and design options available to packaging designers expands, particularly for the metal decoration market. Printing on metals is common in drinks packaging, however it also has other applications, such as credit card printing or for metal boxes. Embellishment, such as labels production, is getting more complex and all of it puts pressure on recycling supply chains. Metal substrates are obviously easy to recycle, but metal foiling is not so kind to the recycling process.

Most metallic substrates for printing are electrolytic tinplate, tin-free steel or aluminium, but copper is also used. The metal sheets might be coated with an opaque white onto which coloured inks are printed, or the inks might be printed directly onto bare metal. Either way, it is extremely difficult to get consistency with either the characterisation data sets or colour matching using offset printing methods. This can increase waste and production times. The problem is even greater when digital printing methods are used, for instance in short-run work.

For the offset market the consistency problem has been addressed to some extent with an ISO standard (ISO 12647-9 metal decoration printing processes using offset lithography), but this standard only applies for sheets pre-coated with white. And offset lithography is only one way of printing on metal. Others are sublimation using inkjet, screen printing, and direct digital printing; in the digital printing arena there is no standardisation at all.

This isn’t stopping development, however. HP Indigo is probably the best known digital press manufacturer with a technology for printing on metal and for foiling. Fujifilm’s Acuity B1 device supports metal foiling too. And at drupa 2016 Landa introduced Nano-Metallography a technology which Actega, a German developer, acquired in 2017. Actega Metal Print has further developed it and recently announced its first installation of the EcoLeaf unit on a Mark Andy Digital Series HD press, being installed at Barthel Group in Bünde, Germany. Barthel Group is one of the largest label printers in the country.

Actega claims that this new unit, the EcoLeaf, is sustainable based on reduced costs, production time, materials usage and waste. It is not a metal printing printer as such, but rather a dedicated unit that sits on the back of a digital press to produce decorative embellishments. Actega Metal Print’s sustainability credentials are based on comparisons with conventional foil based processes. At some point the conversation about recycling digitally printed foils will need to be had, but in the meantime cutting waste and materials is a start.

– Laurel Brunner

This article was produced by the Verdigris Project, an industry initiative intended to raise awareness of print’s positive environmental impact. This weekly commentary helps printing companies keep up to date with environmental standards, and how environmentally friendly business management can help improve their bottom lines. Verdigris is supported by the following companies: Agfa Graphics, EFI, Fespa, Fujifilm, HP, Kodak, Miraclon, Ricoh, Spindrift, Splash PR, Unity Publishing and Xeikon.

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The MDV Ultra Silver substrate 360gsm is now certified for use with the Color-Logic process on the Ricoh Pro C7100X digital colour sheet fed press.

The Ricoh Pro C7100X combined with Color-Logic helps print service providers to achieve advanced print applications that allow them to stand out.   

The Color-Logic solution for printing on metallic substrates is enabled via a plug-in tool for Adobe creative applications, simplifying the design, communication and production of output files for digital print applications with white ink. A range of special effects are also possible via the Color-Logic Pattern FX option.

‘The Pro C7100 certification by Color-Logic for substrates such as MDV Ultra allows designers and PSPs to communicate accurately the colour of the finished metallic effect,’ explained Erwin Busselot, business innovations & solutions director, Commercial and Industrial Printing, Ricoh Europe. ‘PSPs can produce a custom swatchbook for a given substrate and their device providing a visual reference which allows creatives to design with confidence and be sure that what they see and expect to produce is achieved.’

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Printable on both sides, the range comes in three metallic finishes and is suitable for dry toner printing and UV printing. MetaliK is stocked in 330 gsm, but can still be easily folded without risk of cracks. The range also features qualities such as static control and maximum toner adhesion.

‘MetaliK is truly unique, there is no comparable graphical board currently on the market for dry toner printers’ commented James Jarvis, Antalis’ channel director for print. ‘It is such a versatile solution that can be used for a variety of applications, and it’s ideal for short runs as well.’

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The metallic film is laminated to a premium white backed folding box-board. The surface of the film is treatable with print, as well as other print finishing options, from foil blocking to screen processes, enabling customers to create attractive products.

The unusual film has a glitter texture, which provides a tactile experience, as well as a glitter effect with a metallic shimmer.

Mirri Sparkle is currently available as a 380 mic/285 gram product, the sheet size as a stocked product is 900 x 700 mm. A (minimum order) bespoke making is available as 900 x 2100 mm maximum sheet size.

Color-Logic test sheets have been printed by UV litho printer Oriel, based in Hull. These were printed under license, using the Process Metallic Color System and demonstrate the wide range of metallic colours available when printing onto Mirri using Color-Logic.

Richard Gillgrass, managing director of Celloglas, commented, ‘We have had a lot of interest in Mirri Sparkle from a wide range of markets, due to it’s unique glittering shimmer that will create a spectacular sparkle effect for packaging, point of sale, social stationary, craft and many other market places.’

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