Are Overprint Fills really necessary?

[myront]

I get a lot of 3rd party files that use overprint fills. Luckily I can use my macro in CorelDRAW to remove all overprints. But I question are they really necessary?
Somebody enlighten me.

 

[Solventinkjet]

I get a lot of 3rd party files that use overprint fills. Luckily I can use my macro in CorelDRAW to remove all overprints. But I question are they really necessary?
Somebody enlighten me.

Not in digital printing. The only time I regularly used them was when I had a job re-creating art for lithography printing where the registration tolerances were so unpredictable that you needed an overprint.

 

[Bobby H]

I get a lot of 3rd party files that use overprint fills. Luckily I can use my macro in CorelDRAW to remove all overprints. But I question are they really necessary? Somebody enlighten me.

Overprints have their place in actual process printing, where multiple ink plates are being produced. The basics of overprinting is you'll print one ink color over the top of another ink color without the overprinted object knocking a hole through the objects underneath it. Overprinting is in a way a crude version of a transparency effect. With PDF-based technology and true transparency capability I don't think overprints are necessary. I rarely ever use them in my artwork.

Like you, I also receive a lot of D-I-Y customer provided artwork with various objects containing fills (or even strokes) set to overprint. It's pretty aggravating. Clients will apply these settings without actually understanding what the hell overprint even means. Overprint? That's sounds kind of cool. Yes. Let's do that! Knuckleheads.

 

[Boudica]

Isn't checking the overprint box necessary for the spot color for printing white? ...or other "special" colors
... Not something the designer would know, it's a prepress thing.

 

[Pauly]

Isn't checking the overprint box necessary for the spot color for printing white? ...or other "special" colors
... Not something the designer would know, it's a prepress thing.

Yes, this is true.

when printing white and it's not checked, it will not print the colour behind the white.

 

[White Haus]

Isn't checking the overprint box necessary for the spot color for printing white? ...or other "special" colors
... Not something the designer would know, it's a prepress thing.

This is the only time I use overprints - as far as I'm concerned they shouldn't be used otherwise!

 

[FlorenceC]

Canva puts it on *everything*.

Half the time I get files from new clients looking to print their homemade wedding seating chart, this is something I have to deal with. When I forget, all the overprint fill prints as cyan here. Luckily re-PDFing using PDFX works, but if you're not thinking about it, it's a waste of stock and time when the print shows up with unexpected content that won't show up at all on screen.