Dot Off Dot Screen Printing with RGBW Reflective Inks

Recent advances in pigment production resulted in the possibility to print with RGBW primaries instead of CMYK and performing additive color mixing in printing. The RGBW pigments studied in this work have the properties of structural colors, as the primary colors are a result of interference in a thin film coating of mica pigments. In this work, we investigate the angle-dependent gamut of RGBW primaries. We have elucidated optimal angles of illumination and observation for each primary ink and found the optimal angle of observation under diffuse illumination. We investigated dot off dot halftoned screen printing with RGBW inks on black paper and in terms of angle-dependent dot gain. Based on our observations, optimal viewing condition for the given RGBW inks is in a direction of around 30∘ to the surface normal. Here, the appearance of the resulting halftoned prints can be estimated well by Neugebauer formula (weighted averaging of the individual reflected spectra). Despite the negative physical dot gain during the dot off dot printing, we observe angularly dependent positive optical dot gain for halftoned prints. Application of interference RGBW pigments in 2.5D and 3D printing is not fully explored due to the technological limitations. In this work, we provide colorimetric data for efficient application of the angle-dependent properties of such pigments in practical applications.