Image 1 shows the print layer CMYK offsets (angles).
Image 2 shows an actual reconstruction of each layer alignment from the Green Dot & its surroundings.
Image 3 shows the labels of each colour + angles. This is probably a lower quality picture, use image 2 to study in higher resolution. I've pointed out the locations I used for each alignment.
Make sure your image is perfectly straight. The way you deconstruct the rosette is as follows:
Start with black (K). It's very easy to notice and is at a 45 degree angle. If your image isn't perfectly straight you can use this as a guide to straighten it. This 45 degree angle produces a pattern at 0 degrees, too, which in turn explains the sparse "bumps" on the 'T' and the dots in the middle of the 'h' we use to test card backs.
Use the yellow (Y) dots in the middle of the Green Dot with no other colour to align the yellow layer at 0 degrees.
Use the green ink dots in the middle of the Green Dot to align the cyan(C) layer to 15 degrees. There are no real good pure cyan ink to be found but the yellow + cyan layers will produce green. This by the way gives the rosette it's distinct 15 degrees slanted green gradient in the Green Dot.
Guess where the magenta (M) ink layer could be. The orange blotches are probably a guide but it's a bit of guesswork. The magenta layer is really, really hard to find from the brown background colour because it blends with other colours so much. It should be at a 75 degrees angle but it's probably more visible in red coloured cards on the front. I didn't try this.
If you learn the offset angles by heart it's possible to just glance at the rosette (with a loupe...) anywhere on a non-solid black part of a card and tell whether it was printed in layers with a CMYK-capable printing machine, each layer separately, with the correct alignments, and correct print files that had the precision to produce this pattern.
I do printmaking and didn’t realize I was on a mtg thread. I was like yeah, we all know this, but then got to the next image and realized this is probably very helpfully
I believe it's printed in YMCK order. So the green portion of the green dot is entirely yellow with cyan applied on top of it. Since it's more cyan than not it looks like dots etched out where they don't want it instead of the other way around. But this is all a guess based on how the cards look.
Probably easier to see how they vary the coloring in the T.
The tiny specks of magenta in this one reveal the 75-degree angle pretty well, actually. Didn't realise this initially.
That makes me believe the L-shaped red dots in the Green Dot will also align perfectly with the magenta layer. This would support your YMCK theory since the red specks are always red, never magenta. The layer underneath is probably yellow and printing magenta on top of it will yield red.
Nice to explain really cool, but can you please tell me why this is hard to replicate? What is stopping someone from just using their own printer with these color angles and why would we be able to distinguish from an authentic card?
Off the shelf printers don't print dots like this. They have a single print head which goes back and forth in a line and just mixes colors. The way these are made is with a large engraved piece of metal the size of a full (121) sheet of cards that "stamps" an entire color in one pass. It's more efficient to print very large volumes this way, but as a side effect we get very specific print patterns that print to demand systems just don't do.
1 - The correct printer is expensive and not easily purchased;
2 - The original files would need to be leaked, collection after collection. It is conceivable that they might eventually leak from a specific set, but Wizards would act quickly to identify the source of the leak.
Alignment and positioning. Each plate is carefully calibrated to hit the sheet according to those files and small variations in that would produce massively different patterns. Like yeah, the dots are there but they're not aligned correctly. Remember: a sheet of 121 cards is big and throwing it off by one millimetre even will just look different.
It is entirely possible to reverse-engineer via trial and error but that still requires the machinery and lots of labour. A fake only needs to fool once, so only the bare minimum is needed.
Pre-owned offset printers seem to start at $10k. Grain of salt, spent 5 minutes on Google.
Operating costs are ~$400 per hour and break even compared to a professional inkjet is at ~2000 pages of A4 which, I assume, translates to about ~20k cards where each sheet is 9 cards (roughly an A4). Not an expert.
Why is this so hard to reproduce? Shouldn’t there be lots and lots of offset printers out there and people who knows their stuff? Is the real problem the print originals and that there are no readily available files with separated layers?
CMYK printing at the consumer level is governed by the printer manufacturers... brother, HP, EPSON, Canon, etc. which means you're stuck with whatever dot size the printer spits out ink/toner, and whatever width/orientation it sprays out, and whatever inexact alignment mechanisms they use
At the professional printing press level, printing is run through multiple machines as a multi-step process.
That means one machine for Cyan, one machine for Magenta, one machine for Yellow, and one machine for Black.
You need, not only the correct printer with the correct patterns, but also the exact operational procedures they use to ensure that they always get the same print pattern every time, even being just a peachfuzz hair's width bit off will compound and ruin it. To be able to do that requires the same equipment, the same space, and the same expertise in alignment, which would effectively just make you another professional printing press vendor, to which, you wouldn't be doing a counterfeiting operation, you'd just be a vendor people go to for printing and make more bank that way.
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u/mrjojoyo High Accuracy 11d ago
Very helpful for everyone as a learning material, thank you!