What is the Difference Between Whiteness and Brightness of Paper?

What is Paper Coating Made Of?

Coating -- or the lack of coating -- can dramatically affect the appearance of the final printed piece.

But what exactly is coating? Coating is a mixture of clay, white pigment, and binder. It comes in three degrees of smoothness and hardness: dull, matte, and gloss coating. When applied to a printing sheet, coating provides a surface on which ink can sit (called "hold-out"), in contrast to the uncoated surface of an offset or opaque sheet into which ink is absorbed. The hardness of the coating--gloss being the hardest--minimizes dot gain, in contrast to the softness of an uncoated surface such as an offset or opaque sheet. Type and halftone dots do not spread as much on coated stock and therefore have crisper edges. Photographs seem sharper, and colors appear more vibrant and consistent.

Surface coatings not only provide a certain look but also affect readability. The smooth, hard surface of coated paper reflects light more evenly. That is why a gloss coating really makes photos jump off the page. However, the glare of light reflected back to the reader can tire the eyes. A dull sheet, on the other hand, makes photos a little softer in appearance but at the same time improves readability. Consider the matte sheet -- which is a little less smooth than a dull sheet because the coating is not as uniform, and is cheaper to produce -- as another good choice for text-heavy documents.

What is the Difference Between Whiteness and Brightness of Paper?

These terms are not interchangeable. Brightness refers to the amount of light reflected back to the reader's eye. A bright sheet makes photos "pop" due to the contrast between the paper and the ink. An interesting and useful fact is that the paper grades -- premium, #1, #2, #3, #4, and #5 -- are distinguished one from the other based on brightness. Bleaching the paper to increase its brightness moves a printing sheet up the scale to a smaller number and increases its price.

Whiteness, on the other hand, refers to the quality (as opposed to the amount) of light. A white sheet evenly reflects all colors of the visible spectrum. However, papers inherently have either a warm, yellowish tinge or a cool, bluish tinge. In general, blue-white sheets appear brighter than comparable yellow-white sheets (although this is not always true once ink or varnish is applied).

If blues and blacks predominate in your design, a cool white sheet (blue-white) will make the colors appear brighter. If reds, yellows, and oranges predominate, these colors will appear clearer and more vibrant on a warm (yellow-white) sheet.

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Which Is The Best T-shirt Printing Method? Heat -Transfer VS Screen Printing

How Are T-Shirts Printed?

One of my favorite things to do is search through second-hand stores for t-shirts with curious designs and wry sayings. I get to make my personal statement as I walk down the street. T-shirts are to the self-employed what a yellow power tie is to an executive—self-expression.

But how are they produced? I thought about this recently and did some research. Some of the information was new to me. Much of it I already knew. But what surprised me was the large number of printing options. Here are a handful to get you started.

Heat-Transfer Vinyl

For years, most of the t-shirts I saw were produced in a heat press by pressing a transfer sheet with a vinyl applique against the t-shirt fabric. In this method a plotter first cuts out a design in any number of colors from separate sheets of colored vinyl. These pieces are then arranged on the shirt, which is placed on a platen to keep everything in place and the fabric flat. When the top of the heat press comes down onto the shirt and vinyl, the high temperature fuses the vinyl (which is coated with adhesive) to the shirt.

If you run your hand across such a product, you'll feel the raised vinyl in the design. It has a bit of a rough feel. Unlike some of the other methods for t-shirt decoration, the vinyl does not become a part of the fabric. Rather it it sits on top of the fabric to which it has been adhered.

Vinyl transfers are usually durable if properly applied and do not crack or peel even when the garment is washed repeatedly. In fact, the transfer vinyl may outlast the t-shirt.

One of the benefits of using this method of t-shirt decoration is that you can economically produce a very short print run (even one t-shirt). Therefore, it is a good option for adding numbers to shirts (for sports jerseys, for example).

Unfortunately, you can't produce gradients or halftones within the t-shirt art. The process only lends itself to single (or multiple) flat colors.

Screen Printing and Plastisol

Nothing beats the thick ink of screen printing, in my opinion. Screen printed ink has a substantial feel and is durable. The ink sits up on the surface of the t-shirt as well as seeping into the fabric because of its thick body.

Using photo silk screen processes (involving a computer, light-sensitive emulsions, and chemicals), you can create gradients and halftone images. This puts screen printing ahead of heat-transfer vinyl in terms of design flexibility.

However, this is an expensive process. A lot of work has to be done to prepare the screens for the actual printing, so only a long press run can usually justify screen printing. You wouldn't choose this method for one shirt.

That said, you can replicate the traditional (direct) screen printing look with pre-screened plastisol inks applied to transfer sheets. Basically, this is a screen printed image produced on a paper liner, which you then affix to the shirt using a heat press (high temperature combined with high pressure).

One of the benefits of such a process is that you can either buy or produce a number of screen printed transfer sheets and then affix them one at a time to the t-shirts. This gives you the ability to stock fewer blank shirts and print them as needed, choosing the proper sized shirt for the customer (rather than keeping all screen printed t-shirt sizes and all colors in stock).

In addition to traditional 4-color printing, plastisol transfers are good for glitter, foil, puff, and sparkle printing.

The screen printed product is durable. Like transfer vinyl, the screen printed image may even outlast the t-shirt.

Unfortunately, screen printing the transfer sheets takes time since it is usually a subcontracted operation.

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What You Should Know About Printing Ink Drying Time

Has your printer ever called you to say your job will be a day late because it is taking longer than expected for the ink to dry? What should you know about ink drying time to help you plan your printing schedule?

First of all, understand that your printer is making a reasonable request. It is prudent to let ink dry before folding a job to avoid streaking or "offsetting," in which wet ink smears or transfers from one sheet to an adjacent sheet. Some inks dry faster than others, as do some substrates such as synthetic and plastic papers.
Heavy ink coverage (solids and bleeds) on uncoated paper or matte stock take longer to dry, particularly if the ink mixture includes any reflex blue. A print job also dries more slowly on a humid day.

If you have taken all this into consideration when scheduling your job, you can understand and accept your printer's request for more time. If a quick turn-around is needed, you should choose colors other than blues and purples, and/or choose a gloss sheet as a substrate.

If these options are not appropriate in your case, you could ask your printer to coat your job with a varnish or aqueous coating. These coatings cover the ink as it cures, minimizing scuffing and allowing your job to progress through the printing plant more quickly.

Converting Images to CMYK

When you scan a photo, it usually comes into your image editing application--such as Photoshop--in an RGB color space. The same is true for an image from a Photo-CD or a digital camera. RGB (red/green/blue) is the appropriate color space for colors composed of light rather than ink, such as images on a computer monitor. Work you produce for the Internet would therefore be saved in an RGB color space, perhaps as a JPEG.

On the other hand, when creating art files for a four-color brochure, you would need to save your image within a CMYK color space, or you will not get the four color-separated negatives or plates you need to drive a four-color printing press. Although your printer will probably catch this error in preflight, he may charge you for system time to make the conversion. At the very least, this error would add unnecessary time to the prepress component of your job.
Forgetting to change images from RGB to CMYK is a very common error among designers. It is easy to forget, since most desktop ink-jet proofing devices will convert to CMYK on the fly, while you are printing, rather than giving you an error message noting that your images are in the wrong color space. A useful trick to ensure that you supply accurate files is to print color-broken laser proofs. If your application doesn't print something on each of the four pages representing the cyan, magenta, yellow, and black plates, you need to go back into your files and make an adjustment.

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Dye Sublimation Christmas Cards Become A Hot Spot In Christmas Business

Every year in the US alone over 1.5 billion Christmas cards are sent, and with good reason. Christmas cards are a wonderful and tradition-rich way of keeping in touch with family and friends.

The custom of sending Christmas cards was started in the UK in 1843 by Sir Henry Cole. He was a civil servant (Government worker) who had helped set-up the new 'Public Record Office' (now called the Post Office), where he was an Assistant Keeper, and wondered how it could be used more by ordinary people.

Sir Henry had the idea of Christmas Cards with his friend John Horsley, who was an artist. They designed the first card and sold them for 1 shilling each. (That is only 5p or 8 cents today(!), but in those days it was worth much much more.) The card had three panels. The outer two panels showed people caring for the poor and in the centre panel was a family having a large Christmas dinner! Some people didn't like the card because it showed a child being given a glass of wine! About 1000 (or it might have been less!) were printed and sold. They are now very rare and cost thousands of Pounds or Dollars to buy now!

The first postal service that ordinary people could use was started in 1840 when the first 'Penny Post' public postal deliveries began (Sit Henry Cole helped to introduce the Penny Post). Before that, only very rich people could afford to send anything in the post. The new Post Office was able to offer a Penny stamp because new railways were being built. These could carry much more post than the horse and carriage that had been used before. Also, trains could go a lot faster. Cards became even more popular in the UK when they could be posted in an unsealed envelope for one halfpenny - half the price of an ordinary letter.

As printing methods improved, Christmas cards became much more popular and were produced in large numbers from about 1860. In 1870 the cost of sending a post card, and also Christmas cards, dropped to half a penny. This meant even more people were able to send cards.

An engraved card by the artist William Egley, who illustrated some of Charles Dickens's books, is on display in the British Museum. By the early 1900s, the custom had spread over Europe and had become especially popular in Germany.

The first cards usually had pictures of the Nativity scene on them. In late Victorian times, robins (an English bird) and snow-scenes became popular. In those times the postmen were nicknamed 'Robin Postmen' because of the red uniforms they wore. Snow-scenes were popular because they reminded people of the very bad winter that happened in the UK in 1836.


Christmas Cards appeared in the United States of America in the late 1840s, but were very expensive and most people couldn't afford them. It 1875, Louis Prang, a printer who was originally from German but who had also worked on early cards in the UK, started mass producing cards so more people could afford to buy them. Mr Prang's first cards featured flowers, plants, and children. In 1915, John C. Hall and two of his brothers created Hallmark Cards, who are still one of the biggest card makers today!

In the 1910s and 1920s, home made cards became popular. They were often unusual shapes and had things such as foil and ribbon on them. These were usually too delicate to send through the post and were given by hand.

Nowadays, cards have all sorts of pictures on them: jokes, winter pictures,Santa Claus or romantic scenes of life in past times. Charities often sell their own Christmas Cards as a way raising money at Christmas.

Charities also make money from seals or stickers used to seal the card envelopes. This custom started in Denmark in the early 1900s by a postal worker who thought it would be a good way for charities to raise money, as well as making the cards more decorative. It was a great success: over four million were sold in the first year! Soon Sweden and Norway adopted the custom and then it spread all over Europe and to America.

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Costom-printed Industry: Dye Sublimation Printing On Furniture Fabric

Dye sub transferring is a form of heat transfer process that allows you to take a digital image, print it on a sublimation printer and press it onto a garment. You must use sublimation ink, which uses a continuous-tone technology; prints are typically dry and ready to handle as soon as you remove them from the printer. This process can be used on a variety of products, from t-shirts to coasters.

In my neck of the woods, one of the major industries is upholstered furniture manufacturing. The industry isn’t as large as it once was, but the companies that have found their niche are thriving. 

I believe that custom-printed upholstered furniture is an underdeveloped, niche market for digital textile printers and represents a huge growth opportunity, especially for printers with direct or transfer dye sublimation capability.

For a print consumable provider to participate in this market, they have to develop a relationship with someone who can build (or reupholster) the furniture and assist with the layout of the printed images on the fabric. 

This partner might be a small- to medium-sized furniture manufacturing company. There are actually “pockets” of furniture manufacturers around the country . 

Most manufacturers have procedures in place for working with customer-supplied fabric, so for them it’s not a new concept.

A better partner might be a reupholstery shop. There’s one in every town and most can reupholster older furniture and order new frames from larger manufacturers to make new, custom furniture.

Another approach is to produce custom-printed slip covers that could be used on new or old furniture. Different sets of covers could be made for the same furniture, allowing it to be used in different settings.

Who are the prospective customers for this new application? All of your existing clients who have offices with lobbies or customer waiting areas, such as car dealerships, auto service chains and urgent care centers.

 If you’re already producing graphics for trade shows, custom-printed furniture is a natural extension of that product line and another opportunity for the client to get their message across during the event.

 The graphics could be anything from simple combinations of company colors to elaborate uses of logos combined with colors and printed messages.

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Sublimation Sportswear and Sublimation Uniforms In Fast Growing Customized Sublimated Clothing Market

 The expertise of the manufacturers helps in the making the availability of customized Sublimated Clothing in specifications provided by the potential buyers and at the market leading prices. The manufacturers have to install all the advance facilities in their infrastructural premises in order to reduce the extra charges. Some also incorporate units like warehousing and packing to avoid any other additional charges to the total cost being invested.

Facts About Sublimation Printing:
• The sublimation technique is the modern technique, so invented from all the other techniques like thermal printing invented in 1970s.
• There is no barrier in types and complexities of the drawings and logo printing of the uniforms and sportswear. The method helps in infusing the print on the respective fabric.
• As there are various benefits and countable features, the technique is expensive and that adds a drawback to the technique.

Features Of The Sublimated Clothing:
The Sublimation Sportswear and Sublimation Uniforms are widely demanded in the markets of Australia, UK, USA, etc. The Sublimation garments vibrant, glossy, scratch resistance, etc. These features have also made the sublimation printing ideal for various promotional clothing as well as products. Moreover, Sublimated Clothing is one of the very popular gift for the sports lovers. All it takes is latest sublimation printer, excellent quality dye sublimation inks, sublimation printing paper and hot press.

Process Of Sportswear And Uniforms Sublimation:
The sublimation process is simple as it does not require bulk number of steps and gives excellent printing on polyester fabric. The designs provided by the customer are the same is designed on computer using some advance version of graphical design software. The graphic, image, etc., gets high quality look as the printer cartridge has sublimation ink.

After the print of the image, graphic, etc., heat press is used to transfer the same quality image on the Sportswear and Uniforms. The extensive heat converts the ink into gaseous form and gets penetrated on the fabric. Features like durable finish, elegant look, and colorfastness has also made the sublimation process ideal for making Sportswear and Uniforms. The sublimation equipment is compact thus, the result are very much professional and is also considered at international level.

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