Silver Knock-Outs:

What do you do if you want color AND the silver to show through on your design?

You specify silver or the clear part of the CD by leaving that area white on your template page layout and by NOT requesting a white flood on your order forms.

Since the film developer machine does not recognize white as anything - any area that is white gets no ink and thus would be silver. You have to think of it the same way of printing on regular paper using a laser or bubble jet printer. If you left an area white on your page then the printer would not print anything. The same deal with CDs. You specify the spot colors only in certain areas - leaving blank areas for the silver to show through. Remember that the silver is from the aluminum buried inside the CD so it has no part in the silk-screening ink that goes on top :-).

Printed result in composite:

Anywhere in your design that you do not specify a color results in the silver of the disc showing through.

What to do if you want one of these spots to be white ink?

Since white does not show up in a Pantone Formula swatch book it does not show up in your page layout program either! So what to do? Well, you can create your own custom spot color and label it "Spot White" and give it some degree of tint so you can see it on your page. Or you can substitute or swap out a regular process or PMS color in it's place.

In the example below we colored our element using PMS100 and simply annotated our template:

Printed result in composite

You can substitute color anytime you make it very clear and obvious. Make comments in your template file, your order forms and make sure you check your proofs carefully.