What is Spot UV?

Unlike a regular UV print coating that covers the entire print surface in a gloss “sheen”, a spot UV finish is a gloss coat that is added selectively to the print surface - causing some areas of your print to have a luxurious glossy sheen while leaving the other areas of your print surface with a “non-reflective” matte finish.

Spot UV is also known as spot gloss, spot varnish, partial coating, and spot lamination. It has the effect of highlighting and drawing attention to a specific part of your design - such as a logo or text. It also gives your selective design elements a slightly "raised" look and feel. The overall result is a highly contrasting and incredibly stylish print finish. It adds a unique and professional touch to your prints!

How do I create a Spot UV product?

You create a black and white design file indicating the areas of your design that you’d like to add spot UV gloss too. This is uploaded with your original full-color design in the upload section of our site.

To produce a spot UV on both sides of your product, you will require two separate files for EACH side of your print. They must be as follows:

• Your actual full-color design file in jpg or tiff format.

We use your black and white image in production to separate the glossy and non-glossy areas of your print product. The white and black areas of this file represent the areas of your design that gloss will be applied to and the areas that will remain uncoated:

Black = Gloss Coated

White = uncoated

When submitting your files for spot UV printing, you must ensure that the black and white and color files complement each other. In the example (below) you will notice that the designer has created two files that are perfectly in sync. The areas that need to be glossed (in black) are perfectly aligned to their actual print file. To ensure that your spot UV effect will exactly complement your design, you should create your spot UV file in unison with your actual print design

The image on the left is the original design and the image on the right is the spot UV black and white file. These images are exactly the same dimensions and if placed on top of each other, the text and image would match perfectly. When printed, the logo and construction worker would be glossy and the rest of the card design would remain uncoated.

How do I save my Spot UV design file?

Save your Spot UV file as a black and white bitmap file. We also accept black and white JPG, TIF, non-transparent PDF files, Adobe Illustrator and EPS files (version 8 or lower)

• Save both your original (full color) design files and Spot UV (black and white) files to the upload section of our site