Karelia Print Finishes

Bring printed artwork and special finishes from the same PDF page into a registered Blender preview.

Karelia Print Finishes extracts real named spot plates and the four CMYK process separations from one selected PDF page. Explicitly assign desired spots to metal foil, spot UV, emboss or deboss. Create Registered Preview Card makes a new flat card at the correct page size with matching UVs and, by default, an approximate printed-color base from the actual CMYK process plates.

The process base excludes every named spot ink. It does not use a combined PDF composite that could bake foil or varnish alternate colors into the print. Turn off Include printed CMYK artwork for a plain-paper card. For an existing package mesh, use your already registered UVs and apply a finish copy to its original active material; its printed base is not replaced.

A guided sidebar takes you from Choose PDF to Assign finishes and Preview in 3D. Find Ghostscript checks your existing installation, and extraction also tries discovery automatically. An empty output-folder field uses a named mask folder beside the PDF. No software is downloaded by the extension.

New spots begin Unassigned, so cutting guides and ordinary inks do not become foil by guesswork. Multiple plates assigned to the same finish combine by maximum coverage. Emboss and deboss use bump shading, without altering mesh geometry.

Refresh a revised PDF while preserving exact-name finish mappings and existing image references. Process artwork and finish masks update in the same transaction, including packed images. Missing finish spots are marked and their coverage is disabled. Invalid process assets reject the refresh. Changed registration requires an explicit new set. The generated finish copy retains a native reference to its original base, so renaming the base cannot select an unrelated material using its former name.

Extraction runs locally through a separate Ghostscript 10.08.0-or-newer installation under its own license terms. Ghostscript is not bundled or downloaded. No AI model, API key or online service is involved. The original PDF is never edited.

Version 0.3.0 is beta. Tested on Windows with Blender 4.5.14 LTS and Ghostscript 10.08.0 using original synthetic PDFs. The automatic color base is an approximate CMYK material preview, not an ICC-calibrated press proof. Ordinary spot inks are excluded; knocked-out artwork is not reconstructed. Real production PDF validation is still needed.

• Blender 4.5 LTS minimum; tested combination: Windows and Blender 4.5.14 LTS.
• A separate Ghostscript 10.08.0-or-newer installation, available from its official distributor under its own AGPL/commercial license terms; not included in the ZIP.
• Find Ghostscript checks the configured path, PATH and standard installation folders. Choose its console executable manually in Preferences if discovery does not find it.
• A readable PDF with actual named spot separations visible to the PDF interpreter.
• For an existing package mesh, UVs must already match the selected full page boundary. The new flat preview-card workflow creates its own matching UVs.
• Emboss/deboss requires a Principled base shader. A new card can build an approximate CMYK base automatically; existing mesh base materials remain your own color workflow.
• A writable persistent output location: a mask folder beside the PDF by default, or your explicit folder. Keep these files with the project or pack the images.

• No automatic finish detection from flat RGB artwork, UV unwrapping of arbitrary existing meshes, dieline folding or reconstruction of hidden/knocked-out print artwork.
• Emboss and deboss are bump previews, not geometric embossing or production tooling.
• Not a Pantone reproduction tool, color-managed press proof, hidden-layer audit or manufacturing-tolerance validator.
• One page per extraction; 36–600 DPI; at most 16384 pixels per side and 16 Mi pixels per page, with a 64 Mi pixel combined raster budget.
• At most 60 named spots plus four CMYK process plates; ambiguous or case-colliding plate names are rejected.
• PDFs requiring an open password fail clearly. Registration geometry changes require an explicit new set.
• Automatic printed artwork uses only the four CMYK process planes with approximate RGB/gamma conversion. Ordinary named spot inks are excluded; use your own color workflow when those inks are required.
• Existing finish copies share refreshed masks; edits made only to an earlier generated material copy are not carried into a rebuild.
• Extraction versions are retained on disk and require deliberate manual cleanup when unused.
• Only the documented Windows/Blender/Ghostscript combination has been tested; real production PDF validation is still needed.

Karelia Labs · [email protected]

Original extension source: GPL-3.0-or-later. Ghostscript is a separate dependency with its own license. No account, AI model or paid API is needed at runtime.