How to add White Ink to your Illustrator File

Creating the white swatch

In Illustrator, if you open the swatches window you can click on the menu and select the option 'New Swatch'. In the following window, create a swatch with the Color Type set to Spot Color, the Swatch Name set to HPI-White, the Color Mode CMYK and the color values 0% for all 4 colors. 


 

Assigning the white ink to an object

Select the object that you want to have printed using the white ink, and then select the stroke or fill of the object (the stroke is the outline, the fill is everything inside the object) and change it to be the HPI-White swatch that you created.

Positioning the objects

The objects that are supposed to be printed in white should be on top of everything else in the file. To help avoid confusion, you can create a new layer on top of everything and keep all the white objects on that layer in Illustrator. 

Setting object attributes

HPI-White objects also need a special attribute set if they are to be printed correctly behind or above other colors. If you open the attributes window in Illustrator and select the object that you assigned that HPI-White swatch to, you can select the checkbox for either 'overprint stroke' or 'overprint fill', whichever part of the object that the HPI-White was assigned to.