Enter your ink set — get the recommended print sequence and trapping direction for each adjacent colour pair.
Upload PDF — auto-fill the ink set
Drop or click. All Separation ink names get extracted, classified, and loaded into the table below. You can review + tweak each row before generating.
Press Setup
Affects trap amount recommendation
Better registration → smaller traps
Ink Set
Ink NameInk TypeOpacity
Recommended Print Sequence
Trapping — Adjacent Colour Pairs
Trapping direction is relative to the two inks at their interface. "Spread" = expand the lighter ink into the darker. "Choke" = shrink the darker ink away from the lighter.
Flexo Trapping Rules — Quick Reference
White / Opaque Base — always first
White lays down the substrate ground. All process and spot colours print over it. Trapping to white = spread white slightly under the next colour.
Process order — Yellow → Magenta → Cyan → Black
Standard wet-trap sequence for water-based and UV flexo. Yellow prints first (lightest, most transparent). Black last (heaviest coverage, best wet trap over dry colours).
Opaque spots before transparent spots
Opaque inks block light and substrate tone. Print them early so transparent inks can modulate over a clean base. Reverse this and the opaque ink shifts colour.
Spread light into dark
Expand the lighter colour by the trap amount (0.1–0.25 mm typical) so it slightly underlaps the darker colour. This prevents a white gap at misregister.
Varnish / OPV — always last
Overprint varnish seals the ink film. No trapping needed — it floods the full label. Ensure all inks are dry before varnish to prevent picking.
