How to print gold lettering on a document?

[wr213]

Hello,

I am trying to accomodate my wife's wish to make 100 pergamines for her niece's wedding. We are planning to use Astroparche paper. The printer is a solid ink Xerox Phaser 860 model which prints great colors. The issue is this: I am trying to make the flower theme bordering and lettering in a realistic gold tone but when it prints it has this grainy look to it and not what we want. Is there a setting or tutorial to teach this? I am not too knowledgeable in photoshop as I use Paint shop pro 7.0 mostly. Another question, what is the prefer format to make it print good? I am using Windows O/S 2 BMP format.

Thanks in advance,

 

[mobrul]

I'm afraid you've been asked to do an impossible task.
The thing about gold (or any metal, for that matter) is that it reflects what is around it. Gold is simply reflective yellow.
I know of no ink that reflects its surroundings.

That being said, there are a few ways to *simulate* the reflection using Photoshop or some other paint program. This may be the best you can do.

Realistic? No.
Good enough? Depends on how picky your wife is.

 

[jimoblak]

Only 100? How about getting a gold-metallic marker and hand accenting each print? If done well, you can really class up the thing. Create thin outlines/guidelines of the flowers in Photoshop that you can color in later with the marker.

 

[BDNFLNC]

That printer should be able to print gold nicely.

I work at a university where the colors are blue and gold. I print mockups all day that are gold. They come out great.

I suggest getting away from that BMP format first off.

Try a .tif file and see what that does for you. Be sure the colors are set to either RGB or CMYK. CMYK is probably best for what you seem to be tackling.

Try it both ways and see. Also try it in a .jpg format. But I think a .tif, in CMYK mode, at a resolution of 150DPI would be about right.

You can change the DPI in the "Image Size" option. You may need to turn off the checkbox next to resample image. you do not want it to do that. Also, when looking at image size, note that there are two designations...one for screen size and one for print size.

The locations of these options varies on your PShop version...but it's easy to find.

Experiment with these options and let us know what turns up.

 

[SPYDERIX]

Hi,

This is most likely not possible. I have that same Phaser printer and I haven't seen anything that will look like realistic gold. That printer is a CMYK printer and you would need a special gold ink to do it (that is how commercial press do it).

You may need to take this one to the big wigs.

Hope this helps!

NATE
design@spyderix-designz.com

http://www.spyderix-designz.com

 

[BDNFLNC]

I have the same printer here and it works great.

Surely you won't get "metallic" without commercial printing, but I think that wr213 may be looking for just a representation of gold. Not necessarily "metallic".

Just not the pixilated rendering of a .bmp.

We'll see I guess.

I just looked over our printed portfolio...only thing I must admit is a bit of a green tint to the gold in large areas. But it doesn't print spotty or grainy.

 

[wr213]

Thank you all for your timely answer...

BDNFLC,

If I do the cutout, hotwax and coloring effect to gold that makes it resemble nice shiny gold you think that will print nicely in GMYK format?

 

[BDNFLNC]

You may have to experiment with that stuff to get a good effect. But sure...why not.

 

[tjd]

gold is a mixture of green, red, yellow and black. Very liitle red, a fair wack of yellw a shade of black and a dab of green . . .

So the trick is to created the illusion by using it as a radial or fountain fill, so it looks like a light is picking up the colors and highlighting the yellows to a near white at the lightest point then descending through deeper yellow, (yellow smidgin red) to yellow smidgen red smidgen green to yellow lot of green smidgin black to yellow green black in the darkest part.

It is tiresome work and you would be assisted by a texturing tool like corel texture, which contains algorithms for giving repeatable surface qualities, but you CAN do it by hand.

The creation of illusion is the only way you can make somewhat realistic gold on a laser printer for, as other people have noted above, commercial printers use an actual gold "size" ink, gold or brass powder suspended in a medium, for this effect.

If you want you can go to

http://www.stedmancameron.com.au

and have a look at the book spines on the opening page, they are all fountaon fills, and not photographic. If you want to lift a bit of ther brass plate, you cpould probalby arranged sample eyedroppers of the colors along a radial fill bar and get close to the same effect.

Don't take too much notice of the rest of the site, its something I'm playing with over the long term.

Oops! I've joined a club that'll have me as a member?

 

[pixl8r]

There is a great Action/lighting preset for this that comes with the Photoshop WOW book... at least there was. Is far and away the best result I have ever had for gold. There are also many other metals... one of the nicest is brushed steel.

I don't know if the WOW book for PS7 has the metals, but a quick stop at Books a Million or Barnes and Noble would tell you pretty quickly. Best of luck!

Wow JT that almost looked like you knew what you were doing!

 

[Azzuro77au]

Maybe a bit late, but possibly usefull to others...

There is a leafing methode I used once for a party.

First I printed the area desired in metalic through a laser printer, this creates a toner surface that apparently provides a surface capable of hot rolling a metalic film to the paper, it's a bit like carbon paper and uses somthing similar to an intaglio (?) press, but you can use a domestic iron to apply the film.

The metalic film sticks to the areas coated in toner only and produces a great result (shiny too) then I ran it through my phaser for the colour effects... Just make sure your borders and margin settings a correct and it works well.

I'm in Australia, but you can find this stuff in the USA by goin to

http://www.papilio.com/goldfoil.html.

Hope this helps all.


Pauly.

 

[BDNFLNC]

Hey that is a good move with the leafing. I did that once tooo...should have remembered.

But I would hesitate to run it through after doing the gold. Bad fo rthe printer and could be disasterous to clean if it flakes off in there.

Old techie talking there. But good effect!

 

[BDNFLNC]

Hey that is a good move with the leafing. I did that once tooo...should have remembered.

But I would hesitate to run it through after doing the gold. Bad for the printer, could be disasterous to clean if it flakes off in there.

Old techie talking there. But good effect!

 

[Azzuro77au]

I would never run it through a Laser Printer after, but through most inkjets and also my phaser it worked fine.

I used to be an electronics engineer and used to service photocopiers alot so I felt confident in using the inkjet and solid ink printers as there is limited curving throught the rollers and not as hot as the fuser on lasers.

BDNFLNC - good point, never ever through a laser, otherwise i've had no issues.