Introduction to Foil Printing

In this tutorial we will show you how to set up your Adobe Photoshop design for foil printing.

Step 1:
After you have designed your flyer and set up the correct bleeds for printing, you are now ready to set up your design for foil printing.

Step 2:
First select the areas on the flyer that you would like foiled. You may use a variety of select tool (Magic wand tool, Lasso tool, or Marquee tool. Which ever one works best).

Step 3:
Then choose Window > Channels to display the channels palette.

Step 4:
Choose "New Spot Channel" from the Channels Palette Menu – The area that you have selected should now be the same color as the color displayed in the Ink Characteristics title. You may change the color to what ever you like (this is not the color that will be your end result). Make sure that the color that has been chosen is not similar to the color that is in the project. This will make it easy to distinguish what is being foiled.

Step 5:
Please name the new spot channel "Silver Foil" and press ok.

Note:
If you already have an alpha channel and need to convert it to a spot channel, select the alpha channel in the Channels palette and choose Channel Options from the palette menu. Select Spot Color. If needed, rename the channel to "Silver Foil". Click the color box, choose the right build color in the Color Picker dialog box, and click OK. You may need to invert the image (Choose Image > Adjustments > Invert).

Step 6:
Now go to File > Save As and save the file as a DCS2 eps - stands for Desktop Color Separations (Fig. 3). This is a special kind of EPS file that can contain spot color channels. Please make sure that only the option “Spot Colors” is checked in the dialog box. Then click save.

Note:
If the "Spot Color" option is not available, then a spot channel was not created. Please check, and verify the steps, and that the next window matches all the options.

Step 7:
Once you click save "DCS 2.0 Format" dialogue box shows up. Make sure the “Encoding:” is set to Binary and all the options underneath are unchecked. Then click OK.

Step 8:
You have now set up the file to be foil printed.