Editing Mimaki How To (section)

== Step 1: Test round ==

So first you need to choose a file. I started with this design, wanting to print it the cover of a brown book cover.

[[File:StormLadyDeath.pdf|1st Draftl | 400px]]


You might notice that the image has a lot of nuances in color with little heavy contrast. This posed quite a challange for the Mimaki, so keep in mind that if you're not printing on a white basis an image like this is very challanging.


The Mimaki does not recognise pure white as a printable color. So for starters you need to cut up your design in one, two or three layers depending on your needs. For my image I intended the brown parts to allow the natural color of the paper, so in my design I made those parts white.

[[File:StormLadyDeath Phase1.pdf|Color layer | 400px]]

Now the light parts of the skin will also become dark as white is always printed on a seperate layer. Since the Mimake does not recognise white as a color you need to invert your basis so the Mimaki recognises the outline. For my image this would end up looking like this:

[[File:StormLadyDeath Alpha A5 Wit Final.pdf|White Layer | 400px]]

To find the out how to set the white layer please refer to the [[MIMAKI]] page. 

Then for the gloss page follow the same logic as the white layer. White will be transparent, Black will be printed.

[[File:StormLadyDeath Alpha A5 SHINE Final.pdf|Shine Layer | 400px]]


Everything combined and printed on the Mimaki resulted in this booklet:

[[File:StormLadyDeath Final print01.jpg | 600px]]

As you can see the white is extremely glitched and blotched. This is because there was shades of black happening in my original layer. It's extremely important to make sure the white is smooth without and shades, as  even a 1% difference will show up as a white square on the Mimaki white layer. If you really want to stay safe I advice a vector base as there is no chance for missed pixels. If I changed my file to greyscale > bitmap in photoshop it would also have been smooth.