Preparing Print Design Files for Scodix Enhancement

Adding a Scodix enhancement to your print design is a great way to add a sensory element to your audience’s experience. Preparing your files for your printing partner is a breeze from the designer’s standpoint. These four simple steps will walk you through the process so you can streamline your scodified design projects, and ensure your partner is able to bring your vision to life.

Step One: Create Scodix Separations

When you’ve finalized your design, whether in Adobe Illustrator or InDesign, you’ll want to create a separate layer for the areas of the design you’d like to enhance. We recommend naming the base layer “CMYK” and adding a new layer renamed to reflect the effect you intend to add (i.e. UV, Rainbow, Foil, etc.).

Scodix-Layer-Creation

Scodix-Swatch-CreationStep Two: Create the Scodix Spot Color

You’ll want to define a Scodix Spot Color swatch so that your design files separate out properly when it’s time to send your artwork to your printing partner.

To do this, you’ll need to toggle to the swatches panel and add a new color swatch. Rename the color to “Scodix”, or if you’re using multiple effects in your print design – you may consider naming by effect.

Scodix-Spot-ColorThe most critical step of creating a Scodix swatch is to ensure that you set your new swatch to be a spot color. This small detail makes sure the Scodix effect doesn’t mistakenly get printed down the road.

Once this step is completed, you’ll be able to select the previously created “UV” layer in the layers panel, and utilizing the anchor pen tool – begin to trace the areas you wish to scodify.  When you’ve traced an area, make sure to then click the newly created Scodix Spot Color in your swatches panel and fill the selected area.

We highly recommend doing this process piece by piece so that you can apply varying densities to your design.

Step Three: Apply Varying Densities

Scodix-Variable-DensitiesTo apply a variable density to your design in order to achieve a slightly smaller sheen, or to vary the height of the Scodix application – you’ll want to adjust the opacity – using a range of 5-30% – to some of your traced selections.

For example, while we wanted the Ducati body to print with high gloss, we adjusted the Scodix effect of the tail pipe to 20% opacity for a duller effect.

NOTE: Above 30% opacity – it is recommended that you set your opacity to 100% for best results.

Step Four: Prep & Send Your Files!

Once you’ve outlined and assigned an opacity to all the design elements you wish to scodify – you’ll end up with a Scodix layer that looks similar to this:

Scodix-Final-Design-File

Depending on your printing partner, you may be asked to supply your working design files, or to simply send along PDF files for production. To do this, we recommend saving the layers out separately – one for the CMYK layer, and one for the Scodix layer.

To do this, you’ll want to “shut off” the Scodix layer so that all you can see is the CMYK layer for the printed elements of your design. Export a High Quality PDF of this layer and make sure you include CMYK in your document name. Then, you’ll repeat this process – shut off the CMYK layer, turn back on your Scodix layer, and create a PDF of just your scodified elements.

Walk Through with Video:

Check out our YouTube channel for a short video walking you through the scodification process step-by-step here.

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