VisionPrint or one way vision on Summa DC4

As you all know VisionPrint (or One-Way vision, Window-Graphics) is used for creating stunning visuals on one side but still having the ability to see through from the other side. How this is done is very simple, if you have a perforated design which is seen from a distance with a dark background our eyes will be tricked, we will see a non-perforated image. From the other side we have a perforated black plain with a light background (as this is the side we are looking to the outdoors), again our eyes will be tricked into seeing no black plain giving us a nearly unhindered view. This is generally achieved by printing onto perforated vinyl where a black colour is added to the glue side of the vinyl. There are numerous drawback to this perforated vinyl technique, one of which is the difficulty of having it cleaned. The perforated holes tend to get dirty and these need to be cleaned. When applying these kinds of vinyl, people will add a laminate to it. Putting a laminate on top of this perforated vinyl will add durability to the print and it will eliminate the perforated holes getting dirty as well. But the visibility for looking outwards will diminish because of the laminate not being clear enough or air getting trapped underneath the media when applying. As you can see using perforated media has its drawbacks. With the Summa DC series printer-cutter you do not need to use perforated vinyl to create stunning VisionPrint print outs. Because the DC Series printer-cutter is a dry technology which prints layers of colours on top of each other, we can achieve a simulated VisionPrint when printing onto clear vinyl. This can be done in ColorControl as our RIP has a VisionPrint functionality. You simply need to import your design in the RIP and select VisionPrint in the advanced tab.

As you will notice you get to choose from a series of different shapes, starting from the standard perforated design to lines and even squares. But did you know you can use custom shapes even your own logo ? I will explain how you can do this.

File Info: The shapes that are used in ColorControl are 1 bit bitmap files (so black/white bmp's). Generally they have sizes ranging from 64x64 pixels to 16x16 pixels. File printing tips: First of all the join of the printed bands will be slightly visible. These setting changes are only to minimize the visibility of this join. White is a very thick ground layer. At the join you will have an overlap problem, that is why it is better to set dot overlap and colour offset to off. It is possible you will see a small gap between two printed bands (see linefeed tolerance of dot). Only thing you can do about this is set dot overlap to half. File creation tips: make sure your design height can be divided by 16. This will make sure the design you've made will be repeated in a similar fashion. In order to optimize for printing without colour offset and dot overlap to half it is advised to have as much non-printed pixels at the top and bottom of your design. File creation I want to create a Summa logo to be used as VisionPrint shape. For this I will use photoshop (you can use any bitmap drawing program, as long as you can save as a 1-bit bitmap). Create a new file, I will use a 128x128 pixel sized canvas as starting point.

Now I will add our Summa logo to the design. This size of one object is approximately 108x27 pixels.

My next Summa logo will be placed 5 pixels underneath this one (27+5 = 32 can be divided by 16). It will not be very visually pleasing, if we put every summa logo directly underneath each other. That's why we will give an offset to our summa logo to have it slanted in comparison to our first.

As you might have guessed, in order to have a repetition we have to make sure that the letters which disappear to the left will reappear to the right. Now continue to fill up your design.

We can now use this design as a visionprint shape. Take a note that all the black parts will be used to print on, not the white area. I wanted to have the Summa logo used as the perforation. So I need to inverse my image.

As I already mentioned in my tips, it is best to have as much non-printed pixels at the top and bottom of your shape. I will start first by reducing the height of my canvas (this is optional, in my example it will help me to retain my repetition) to 64 pixels. And as it is reduced I will reposition my images to get as much non-printed pixels as I can on this overlap.

Now convert your image to black/white (if you worked in a different colour spectrum like me). Sometimes you need to convert to grayscale first before converting it to black/white.

When converting to Bitmap make sure you do not dither the image as this will have adverse effects on the output.

Using the shape in ColorControl. Start ColorControl and select View/Preferences.

Select Plug ins then RIP until you see this screen

And click on Custom masks ... This will bring up a dialog box to import this custom shape.

Press Import Shape and navigate with your explorer to where you have saved the bitmap.

You will see a preview of your shape being repeated (good for verifying if there is a repetition error) and a place to enter the shapes' name.

An indication of the coverage of the print will also be shown, note that this shape has a coverage of 61 %. Typical shapes range from 50-65 % coverage. The only difference will be seen when trying to look out towards the outside as one being more transparent than the other. Press ok to continue. Import your design, make sure the rotation is set to 0 (as this shape will be printed in 0, if another rotation is used, then the shape should be rotated before importing it). Select the advanced tab.

Select the shape you have just imported and select the first cassette as black (4) and the second printed layer as being white (9). And press print. Original VisionPrint