Metallic inks shine on

However, new technologies and inks are making offset and metallic inks a very feasible combination. "This means brilliance can be achieved without the expense of gravure engravings, and this is obviously beneficial for medium- to short-run jobs that are more ideally suited for offset," Neary said.

Measuring metallic inks for color accuracy is another problem. With more brand owners using metallic inks, and new trends arising that focus on printing color inks over metallics and a growing demand for colored metallic inks, color measurement is important. But the difficulty is that metallic particles in the ink scatter light, making it very hard for an instrument to measure color with accuracy.