Fading or otherwise deteriorating designs can add a cool distressed look on a print, but sometimes you just want a print to last. You can lock up your garments in a display case and hope for the best, but if you actually want to wear them, then protecting them is a must.
That’s where “spreading the clear”, adding a layer of clear ink over your print comes in. In addition to protecting your print, and extra layer of clear can also enhance the print quality.
To change the spread clear on a job:
1) Select the job, and make sure you have a print mode with a clear option.
2) Click on “Color Adjust” found in the job tab on in the lower right of the screen.
3) The Easy Color adjustments dialog will open. Here, you will select the correct layer from the dropdown list on the top right (on some devices this will be in separate layers).
4) On the bottom right there is a drop-down list with values of spread (you will achieve more spread as you increase the value).
If you want to set a default value of spread for all your jobs, you can set it in the printmode. This ensures the same spread value will be set for any job using this printmode.
To set the spread in your printmode:
1) Go to the “Device” menu and select “Manage Print Modes”.
2) In the “Print Mode Manager” dialog, select the printmode in which you would like to set the clear spread.
3) Double click on the printmode or select the “Edit Printmode” icon at the top of the dialog.
4) On the left of the “Printmode Properties”, select the layer that contains the Clear/Gloss and select “Processing Options”.
5) On the right, click on the “Clear and Other Spot Options” button. Here on the bottom right you’ll find the same dropdown list for the spread value that you saw in the “Easy Color Adjustments” dialog.
6) After setting the desired value, you can select the “Treat All Semi Transparent As Opaque” check box found on the left. This will ensure that the same amount of clear is spread over the whole design.
7) Finally click “Save” and the new settings for clear spread will be saved in the printmode.
It’s important to remember that when making changes to your printmode, you will need to select the prinmode in the queue before the changes will be applied to the queue, as processing options are a printmode feature. If you change the value of the spread for the clear in the queue instead of the printmode, you will lose this change when you change printmodes.
Want to follow along with these steps? Check out our video below: