What is an overprint?

Printing terms and concepts are often confusing when you're unfamiliar with them. When setting up your files for print, a few common terms are good to know to ensure your file is printed how you would expect.

What is overprint?

Overprint is when colours are printed directly over each other, which causes a mixing of the colours. This mixing of colours results in a different colour. For example, the overlap would create a green colour if yellow ink is set to overprint on top of the cyan print. This can become an issue when only parts of your file are set to overprint, resulting in uneven colours throughout.

When objects are not set to overprint, the colour is knocked out underneath. The colour beneath the front layer of the artwork is unprinted, leaving only the colour of the front layer. Colour mixing is not possible in this process. This prevents colours from mixing or getting muddy or over-saturated. For example, suppose the objects are set to be knocked out, printing magenta ink over a yellow print. In that case, only the top layer will be printed, resulting in magenta.

Here are some essential tips for using overprint in your design:

• Suppose an element is set to overprint and has no colour underneath. In that case, this will make the element with overprint, not print.
• Objects in white should never be set to overprint, as there is no regular white ink in printing. When you set a white object to overprint, it won’t appear in the printed result. The only thing that would be printed would be the layer beneath.
• When setting up your file for print, if you want to check & control if you do/don’t set it to overprint, you can do this in the file output attributes.