Spot UV DTF: What is it and how do I set up my art work

How to Set Up Artwork for Spot UV DTF Printing

Spot UV DTF is perhaps the most premium product you can offer using a UV DTF printer. It is a brilliant way to stand out from the crowd and make your products look that bit more special. Whether you print in-house or order a DTF Trade Print, the good news is that printing a Spot UV DTF product is no harder than standard DTF.

Here is a quick step-by-step guide to setting up your artwork for a Spot UV DTF print using a 1ClickPrint printer. We will be using Photoshop to create the artwork.

File Prerequisites

Before you start selecting your gloss areas, you need to check two main things:

• Colour Mode: Make sure your artwork is set to CMYK.

• Background: Ensure that you have a transparent background layer.

Step-by-Step Artwork Setup

1. Select the gloss areas: Start by selecting the specific areas of your design that you want to have a gloss finish. You can use whatever your preferred selection method is. For example, you might want to select a specific logo or graphic. Any area that isn’t selected will automatically be printed matte, whilst the selected areas will be glossy.

2. Create a spot channel: Once your areas are selected, go over to the Channels window and create a new spot channel.

3. Name the channel: This step is really important. The channel must be named exactly Spot clear. Use a capital ‘S’, a capital ‘C’, and make sure there are no spaces.

   • Note: The colour you assign to this channel is just to help you see what you have selected on your screen; it won’t show up on the final print, as the gloss is completely invisible aside from the shiny effect.

4. Select all pixels: Make sure you select all pixels for the area.

5. Create a work path: Navigate to the Layers menu, then go to Paths, the 3 line menu in the top right of the paths window, and create a work path. Setting the tolerance to 1 is fine for this.

6. Save the path: Click ‘Save Path’. The name you give this path isn’t particularly important.

7. Create a clipping path: Next, you need to create a clipping path. When doing this, you must leave the ‘flatness’ box completely blank. Do not put anything in there, not even a zero.

8. Save as a PDF: Go to save your file and choose the Photoshop PDF format.

9. Set the PDF standard: In the save options, make sure the standard is set to PDF/X-4:2010.

10. Save and finish: Click save, and you are completely done.

     

While setting up the paths might feel like a tiny bit of a faff the first time you do it, it really just comes down to selecting your glossy areas and clicking a few buttons to get it ready for UV DTF Printing.

Your printer will output the file exactly as you have set it up here: your selected parts will be nice and glossy, and the rest will have a sleek matte finish. The results are absolutely fantastic, so have a play around and enjoy printing.