The term overprint is the process of printing one thing over another. So when one ink is printed on top of another one, either accidentally or on purpose to create a particular effect, this would be considered overprinting.
As previously mentioned above, overprinting can be utilised to produce special effects such as additional colours and silhouettes. However problems can occur when this happens unintentionally. For example when a colour and pure black touch. Pure black is made made using only the K plate. If you are unfamiliar with the plate colours and the CMYK colour model, check out our blog post on the topic. It is recommended to use a richer black, which uses all four colour plates, when overprinting is a concern. Most design software will allow you to set the overprint settings.
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