In order to turn your digital designs into your very own foil prints, you’ll first need to make sure that they meet our foil printing file requirements:
- The optimum resolution for foil print files is 300dpi, while the minimum resolution is 200dpi.
- Any areas defined as transparent (no colour information at all) in your artwork will show the paper’s gold or silver foil background.
- If you want to include white elements in your design, you must not define those areas as white (hex value
#FFFFFF). To ensure white elements print in specific areas, we recommend using a slightly off-white colour (hex value#FEFEFE). - Any coloured areas (even those with very faint colours) will print with white underneath and the colour on top.
- Be sure to check your file for any unintended white areas, as these will print and may not show the foil finish as expected.
- Save your print file as a transparent PNG.
Minimum line width for the colour layer above the foil: There isn't a strict minimum width, but very fine lines may appear differently than expected. Our colour printing heads can produce finer details than our white printing heads. For extremely thin lines, you might see colour directly on the foil without the white underlay, which could alter the appearance slightly.
Minimum line gap between colour showing the foil: Similar to the line width, there's no fixed minimum gap. Our printing resolution is 600dpi, so any visible gap in your design should theoretically be reproduced in print. However, very fine details may be affected by our printing process, which includes a slight pullback of the white layer to account for dot size differences.
Finish of the colour layer: Our standard process currently produces a glossy finish for the colour layer. Unfortunately, we don't currently offer a matte finish to contrast with the shiny foil underneath.
Example of correct image file with transparent areas
Example of incorrect image file with white areas