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How it works

Firefly inks are absolutely invisible in regular light.

Turn the lights off and a black light on and that’s when the fun begins.

Above is an actual video of a set of Firefly ink cartridges for the Epson Workforce 1100 sitting on top of a sheet of Firefly™ paper that has been printed with an image sourced from the internet. In the video, we turn the lights on, then turn them off while a black light shines on the print and cartridges. The camera takes a moment to adjust.

In the above video we take a hand-held blacklight flashlight to show how the ink cartridges and the print can be made to glow. This particular printer is the Epson Workforce 1100. It is relatively inexpensive at $149, yet produces 13″ wide output.

If you look closely you can see that we printed nearly to the edge of the Firefly™ paper. The thin margins of the paper that have not been printed are not reflecting the UV. So, they appear as dark borders. For best results you should print on paper without OBA, such as Firefly paper. Otherwise, papers which have been brightened with OBAs will not produce a very dark areas and the highlights will not be very bright.

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Firefly ink does not have any physical color. It looks like a thin milky white substance. The substance has been developed to absorb UV radiation and emit a specific color glow. There are up to six different inks available which glow cyan, light cyan, magenta, light magenta, yellow and white. They emit their greatest glow with black lights that emit at 365nm.

How the effect works is by using an OBA-free paper as the “black” and to print “white”. OBA’s absorb the UV from the black light and will glow a bright bluish color. So the effect requires the use of paper that does not contain any OBAs (brightening agents.)

The colors are formed by the cyan, magenta and yellow glowing inks in a non-traditional manner. The image must be inverted (like a negative) before it is printed so that light areas print dark and dark areas print light. This is why white ink is used. The paper becomes the dark and the light is printed as white. But, when the colors of an image are inverted to make it a negative, the image will not print naturally.

So, we produce a special software called Firefly Image Converter which allows you to easily convert an image to print prior to printing it from your regular applications. If you own Photoshop, we provide a set of instructions for you. However, Firefly Image Converter has a lot of experimental tools within it to get the most out of the inks. Its compatible with both Mac and Windows.

When the converted image is printed, it appears life-like and normal under black light.