If you send stickers to a shop with a professional sticker printer and cutter, such as a Roland, Mimaki or Summa machine, the shop will ask for a print-ready PDF “with a CutContour”. This guide explains what that means, how each RIP reads it, and how to check your file before you send it.
What CutContour is
CutContour is not a feature or a file type. It is the name of a spot color that you apply to a vector path around your artwork. Roland’s VersaWorks manual sets the rule: to be recognized as cut lines, paths must be vector data drawn with a spot color named CutContour, and “Spot color names are case-sensitive, so make sure the name is typed correctly”.
When the RIP processes the file, it finds every path in that spot color, removes it from the print and sends it to the cutter as the cut line. Roland’s 2016 file-prep guide describes the line appearing on screen as a colored stroke that the RIP replaces with “marching ants”.
Why it has to be a spot color
A spot color is stored as its own ink, separate from cyan, magenta, yellow and black. In a PDF that means its own separation plate, which is exactly what lets the RIP pull the cut line out cleanly. A path colored with an ordinary CMYK swatch is just more artwork, and it will be printed. Roland’s guide is explicit: “The Color type must be Spot Color.”
Names by RIP: Roland vs Mimaki vs Summa
Each manufacturer documents the name slightly differently, as of October 2026.
| RIP or workflow | Cut spot name | Rule |
|---|---|---|
| Roland VersaWorks | CutContour | Exact name, case-sensitive. The manual documents only this one name for contour cuts. |
| Mimaki RasterLink7 | Starts with CutContour | “Prefix the spot color name with CutContour.” Single-byte letters and numbers may follow, such as CutContourCut1 or CutContourHalf, to give paths different cut conditions. |
| Summa with Onyx RIP-Queue and Cut-Server | CutContour by default | The name, not the color, is what matters. You can append identifiers such as CutContour1, and the prefix set in RIP-Queue must match “including case and spaces”. |
| Summa GoSign plugin (legacy cutters) | Thru-cut and Kiss-cut | The Illustrator template ships two spot swatches with these names for through-cuts and kiss-cuts. |
If you don’t know which RIP a shop uses, CutContour is the safe default. It is the only name all three document.
How to set up the cut path
Stroke, not fill
Roland’s guide applies the CutContour swatch to the path’s stroke: weight 0.25 pt in Illustrator, hairline in CorelDRAW, normal blending at 100 % opacity. Leave the fill empty. A filled shape in CutContour covers your artwork on screen and invites mistakes, and the stroke width doesn’t change the cut, because the line is never printed.
Vector only
The VersaWorks manual is blunt: “Regardless of type and width, lines in raster data such as bitmap data cannot be recognized as cutting lines.” Drawing a magenta outline into a PNG, or flattening the PDF to an image, turns the cut line into pixels and the RIP will print it. Your artwork can be an image; the cut line must be a path.
Overprint
Set the cut path to overprint. EFI’s Fiery XF help explains that visible contour markings “can appear as a white outline” when “the overprinting attribute of the cut contour is set to knockout instead of to overprint.” With knockout, the artwork underneath is cleared along the line before the cut path is removed, which leaves a thin unprinted edge exactly where the blade will go.
Does it have to be 100 % magenta?
No. Roland says the swatch values “may be set to any you choose”, and Summa’s documentation says the name, not the color, is what counts. Magenta is a practical choice because it stands out against most artwork on screen and on a proof, which is why Gridback uses a 100 % magenta alternate. The name is the only part that has to be right.
Kiss cuts, through-cuts and the sheet outline
A kiss-cut sheet needs two kinds of cut: a kiss cut around each sticker through the vinyl only, and a deeper cut around the whole sheet. On a printer-cutter those are usually two spot colors, so the operator can give each its own depth and pressure. The difference is covered in kiss-cut vs die-cut stickers.
How the second name is handled depends on the RIP:
- Mimaki: a name like CutContourSheet starts with CutContour, so RasterLink7 accepts it as a separate cut path with its own conditions.
- Summa Onyx: names that share the prefix can be set up as separate cut layers in the RIP, so ask how the shop has configured it.
- Roland: VersaWorks documents only CutContour. Ask the shop how they want the sheet outline marked, or whether they would rather add it in the RIP themselves.
How to check a PDF before you send it
Acrobat Pro. Open Tools, Print Production, then Output Preview. Set the preview to Separations to list every ink in the file. You should see the four process inks plus CutContour (and your sheet-outline spot, if you have one). Untick the process inks and only the cut lines should remain. Tick Simulate Overprinting to preview how overprinting objects will look.
Illustrator. Open Window, Separations Preview and turn on Overprint Preview. Adobe describes the panel as the place to preview color separations and overprinting. Hide the process plates; anything still visible is in a spot color.
Things to look for:
- the spot is named exactly CutContour, with no extra space or different capitalization;
- there is no CutContour in the artwork itself, for example in a logo that happened to use the swatch;
- every sticker has a closed path;
- the cut path overprints.
Why a RIP ignores a cut line
When a shop says “your file has no cut line”, it is almost always one of these, each of which follows from the manufacturers’ own rules above:
- Wrong name. “cutcontour”, “Cut Contour” or “CutContour “ with a trailing space fails Roland’s case-sensitive match and Summa’s “including case and spaces” rule.
- Process swatch. The swatch is named CutContour but its color type is CMYK, not spot, so it prints as magenta.
- Raster line. The outline was drawn into the image or the PDF was flattened, so the line is pixels.
- Lost on export. An export setting that converts spot colors to process removes the spot. Check the inks list in Output Preview after export, not just in the design file.
- Name the RIP doesn’t expect. A legacy Summa GoSign workflow expects Thru-cut and Kiss-cut swatches instead.
How Gridback writes CutContour
Gridback’s print-shop presets export a CutContour PDF with your artwork as an image and every cut line as a vector path in a Separation spot color named CutContour, 100 % magenta alternate, 0.25 pt, set to overprint. In kiss-cut sheet mode, the rounded sheet outline goes into a second spot named CutContourSheet. Both names are editable before export, so if the shop’s RIP expects Thru-cut and Kiss-cut, or a Mimaki-style CutContourKiss, type those in. For a Roland shop, keep CutContour for the stickers and ask how they want the sheet outline.
Artwork still has to be sharp: Gridback warns below 300 dpi, and the resolution guide explains why. You can build a sheet in the browser; your images never leave your device. If you cut at home instead, the method is different: see Silhouette registration marks.