Wooacry White Ink Design Guide
When customizing acrylic charms, standees, or other printed items, you may have seen the term “white ink layer” or “white ink file.” But what exactly is it?
Let’s break it down:
What is White Ink?
White ink is a special layer printed beneath your artwork on clear or translucent materials (like acrylic or PET). Its job is to make colors look vivid and opaque instead of washed out or see-through.
Without a white ink layer, any colors printed directly on clear materials would appear semi-transparent, especially light tones like yellow, pink, or skin tones. That’s why a white ink layer is added beneath the design, acting like a solid foundation for the colors to sit on.
It’s basically like priming a wall before painting, it makes everything pop!
What Can White Ink do?
1, Make the acrylics semi-transparent with different colors, just like the stained glass window.
2, Make the special materials for holographic photocards or holographic badges see-through.
Why Does White Ink Have to Be Black?
This part may sound a bit backward, but in most print file setups, you create the white ink layer using solid black color (RGB: 0,0,0).
Why? Because:
– Printers treat pure black as a signal to print white ink underneath.
– Areas with black = “Print white ink here”
– Areas with white or transparency = “Don’t print any white ink here”
This setup allows you to control which parts of your design are opaque or see-through. So yes, black = white ink. Strange, but true.
How to Create or Edit Your Own White Ink Layer
Step-by-Step:
1, Open your original artwork in Photoshop or Illustrator.
2, Duplicate the layer and name it White_ink or White.
3, Select the areas where you want white ink, usually, this is your entire design minus any transparent borders or cutouts.
4, Fill those areas with solid black (RGB: 0, 0, 0).
5, Delete or hide everything else — you want only the white ink area in this file.
6, Save as a PNG with transparency
Tips:
For areas like holo sparkles, transparent wings, or glass effects, leave them white or transparent in the white ink file to preserve see-through detail.
For high precision, use the Magic Wand Tool (Photoshop) or Image Trace + Expand (Illustrator) to select your shapes.
Wooacry White Ink Printing Guidelines
There would be a white ink contraction during the all production. White ink contraction is a feature to reduce the white ink area, and there are no white ink spills around the edges of the pattern. It’s recommended for most of the design.
Wooacry will set the ‘contract white ink’ as the default setting, if you want to keep the white ink with no contract, it will be spills around the edge.
But we recommend you to keep the white ink with no contract if the case is that your designs are white colors such as text.
What Happens If Your White Ink Design Is Incorrect?
To better help artists avoid printing issues caused by incorrect white ink layers, we have obtained permission from some artists.
Thanks to their generosity, other artists can reduce their trial-and-error costs.
Below are some examples of “incorrect white ink designs” we have compiled for your reference only.
Case 1: The artist (id=tiffitytaffity) used crayon-like strokes with broken, sketchy lines. However, in actual printing, this effect cannot be achieved because discontinuous white ink areas cannot be printed properly.
Solution: Use smooth, continuous lines whenever possible.
Case 2: After uploading the design, the artist (id=Oluloluu) deleted the white ink layer, which resulted in the printed acrylic having a semi-transparent effect.
Solution: If you do not want a semi-transparent effect, do not modify the white ink settings in the Wooacry editor.
Case 3: The artist’s (id=Forest Tea) design lines were too thin, and after the white ink shrank, parts of the white pattern disappeared.
Solution: It is recommended that lines be at least 6 pixels wide, with 8 pixels being ideal.
Case 4: The artist (id=Milsari) has the same issues with the case 3, the lines are too thin.
Last but not least, we hope to help artists create merch that matches their expectations as much as possible.
We also warmly welcome you to reach out to us about any issues you encounter.
If you would like assistance with your white ink design, you can visit our Ko-fi shop to find our staff for support.
Wooacry Support Team