There’s no question soft touch ‘fiber’ paper stocks are very unique and create the sensation of feel to your design. However, they have production drawbacks with buying even cartons from paper mill and the effect of paper color when printing CMYK inks.
A less expensive alternative is coating your next print project with UV Soft Touch coating. UV Soft Touch coating is applied inline in the coating unit and is not a varnish. Varnish is a form of coating but it is applied in a printing unit, not a coating unit. Varnish will use a valuable printing unit on press and be more expensive. UV Soft Touch coating is also ‘cured’ inline on press by ultraviolet (UV) energy. The difference between aqueous Soft Touch coating and UV Soft Touch coating is UV Soft Touch has higher rub resistance, no streaking in coating and softer feel due to thicker coating layer.
Applications for using UV Soft Touch coating include: unique business cards, postcards, rack cards, flyers, greeting cards and presentation folders.
When using UV Soft Touch coating there are a few design thoughts to keep in mind. Number 1, Soft Touch coating has a matte finish and will flatten out color and contrast. Use a larger shadow dot when possible to help compensate. Number 2, if you have a particular Touché color stock in mind, you can create that unique background color in CMYK and use Soft Touch coating to re-create the look of the original Touché paper stock. Most importantly, number 3, there is no need to cross your fingers that the printing process is going to work. No special meetings required to read over the ‘printing tips’ with your printer that the ink will adhere to the stock surface on ‘fiber’ paper stocks. We run Soft Touch coating all day long on 20 point business cards with no issues.
Even better, combine soft touch with spot UV coating for a special effects. Here is an example of combining soft touch and UV and how the files were made:
Have you used Soft Touch coating? What was your experience with Soft Touch coating?
Please leave your comments below…
7 replies on “UV Soft Touch Coating – Alternative to Touché Paper”
I would like to know what the name of the coating manufacturer is. We have tryed some soft touch uv coatings that did not work.
We use a combination of two different coatings and agitate continuously for enhanced effect. We do not provide information of which vendors we use as our formula is a hybrid.
Hello
I have an intersting about soft touch coating.
Could you send me some sample sheets?
Best regards
Peter Shin
Hello, my company is interested in your uv soft touch coating. I am interested in matte coating and very hgh scratch resistant and foil stampable . Please send me tech data sheet and some sample. Thank you
It sounds very interesting I need to try on my press ASAP. Please send sample to me
Are there any soft touch coatings that dont scuff? We have a project with a large solid black area and it always scuffs in shipping. We are forced to package individually which gets very expensive.
UV soft touch works ok. You can also look into using a silk laminate that works well…