Silvers to print?

[Frog Man]

Hi Ryan,

A trick I use when trying to emulate Gold or Silver on my large format is to print about 40% Black for Silver or the Gold colour in Corel but print with the head in it’s highest position, it produces a speckled texture that almost looks like the light is reflecting off a metallic surface. Of course it’s only good for large format printing and might not work on every printer but thought it worth a mention.

Regards, Paul.

[Ryan Fairweather]

Thanks for that, i have already discovered with some test prints exactly the same thing.

Great minds think alike eh? 😀

[Frog Man]

Yeah I guess, although I’m sure my missus wouldn’t agree 😀

The metallic PMS colours 8003 – 8321 also give some good results.

[David Rowland]

dont rule out printing onto silver vinyl… it has interesting results.

[Ryan Fairweather]

Such as?

Does the silver come through the print, providing a metallic look?

[David Rowland]

it can do… however i dont want u going selling ‘yes it works’ to your customer without you seeing it for yourself.

[Rodney Gold]

Yes, it does give the inks a metallic look , and you can vary the metallic look with your inkloads as well as the type of substrate you print , the best is mirror silver for this.
Some of the mirror Metallics wont accept inks , but there are 2 workarounds
1) spray artists fixative on the metallic
2) Overlam the metallics with Clear and print the clear

And a 3rd one , and that is to buy a coated mirror vinyl (we get ours from Starrex/X-film
I would also limit this to small stuff if you printing mirror , big stuff has a sort of wavy look due to the vinyls , ie the reflective surface is not dead flat.
You can actually print on other substrates for this with different properties
Rowmark make a substrate called laserlights , it has a wonderful shiny brush finish and is self adhesive and can be vinyl cut , its a mil spec material with extremely strong adhesives and the silver and gold can be printed very nicely , expensive and small sheets , but the look is wonderful , fantastic for small durable decals that need a bit of thickness.