Shiny Black Photocopy Effect

One of the most recent projects I did was to make a shiny multi-layered photocopied effect for a publishing directory.

The client had the letters and pages of the alphabet photocopied as spreads again, again and again, to create a velvet, shiny effect.

From our point of view, this was very challenging as we had to devise a way of making this work and be close to their original artwork, by using just blacks. As the whole job was printed black with no colour. The job was a 232page directory that had 170pages of text, with advert pages at the end and these black photocopied dictionary pages placed in the document every 8 pages or so.

Firstly I created a layer in Indesign showing all black, so that would be all text pages, adverts and a first all-black layer of the artwork, which was labelled “BLACK” and had overprint fill.

The next step would be to create from the original black artwork another black colour, but this time make it a SPOT BLACK COLOUR and call it “Black 2nd Hit”. Layer this on top of the previous black layer with an overprint fill again on the black.

The final step for the shiny black machine finish was to create a 3rd layer from the original artwork but make it show only a few elements of black to pick out the shine. So I opened the original artwork in Photoshop saved it as “Cover spot black litho”. Adjusted the levels on the 3rd arrow, right-hand side and dropped down by about 150 to make the threshold almost 50%. Basically to create an impression of the original art. this will become the shiny, velvet machine varnish finish on top of the existing layers. Set this as a spot black colour and call it “Litho Varnish”.

That’s it, you will get 3 black layers printing 3 levels of black to create that over photocopied effect. You can use this to great effect when you want to highlight an element of an image very subtly.

Specialist print approaches to solve unusual problems

Okay, we concede, it doesn’t look like much. But this was a highly challenging problem to resolve and in print terms, 3 black layers later, our client was delighted.

My point is that we’re here to answer every print challenge, no matter how unconventional it might be. And we actually thrive at the opportunity to answer a printing challenge at the same time.

If you have a design or print challenge that your bog standard high street printer will never solve, then the team at PrintHouse is likely to be your answer.

Get in touch on 020 8963 0123 or use the form below and we will come back to you. Your print project doesn’t need to be complex for us to help. But if it is, that won’t stop us from helping.