Drag and Drop Browser Seps

[DDSol]

Not you Han the moderators  we are being moderated my friend.

I know. But it was funny. I think...

[DDSol]

I added preview labels and you can also use double-click to change an ink color to anything you feel like. You still can't delete.

[DDSol]

Please note, it does not work in Internet Explorer. IE doesn't do WebGL. To do the seps fast enough, your GPU must be used. IE doesn't support this at all. Install Chrome Frame for IE (and stay in IE to use it) OR use Chrome or Firefox.

You can install either of these "on the side", just to use websites that require them. WebGL is an up-and-coming technology and I'd never have used it if it weren't simply necessary. I can't build a version for IE.

[DDSol]

I added drag-and-drop ink reordering. You still can't delete .

[Dottonedan]

I figured it didn't use IE. I updated, but like you said, no go.  I then wen into Firefox and all was fine.

I uploaded another file last night. It works great thus far. I added in a beige and it seemed to put it right in where I thought it should be.

Then I added in a darker blue, hoping to use that in place of the black being used to make up those darker area but it seemed to add in much more than I'd like...but for me, could be easily adjusted.

I like that it puts in "something" in all areas. This is where some of those sep programs lack I've seen. Not all, but some will just add more base whit ...and black halftone in place of a very light beige. This so far, seems to let you add in a beige...and it puts it in that area needed. THIS is really good so far.

I know ( the preview is not exact) but looks very good. Many might be expecting the preview to be 100% but its about 90-95% to what my original art looks like, but the end results may be better or worse yet. We will eventually see once we are able to have the actual seps in hand.

Not even my own seps ever look 100% to what is in preview screen, so I am still impressed.
I would expect that if I see the look on screen, it will be very close.

[DDSol]

Thanks for the nice feedback Dan. I'll be adding the ink deletion soon and then some settings, such as size of the print and lpi. Then I'll be ready to make the server end that actually renders the seps for download. It's till a while before that's all done. Next up is settings like mesh count, halftone settings (Rosette/Flemenco, maybe dot shapes)m a t-shirt in the background, allowing th et-short to show through no matter what color it is (to cut down on that color ink), sliders maybe for HSB/BCI/Gamma adjustment, sliders for ink transparency, layer correction strength, tone curves, dot gain, etc, etc. It'll be complete before I'm done. It'll have plain Spot seps as well as Simulated Process. It'll spit out seps, comps, spec sheets, reports, ink recommendations, order recommendations, comp links, it'll store art in a vault, have a thumbnail browser, multiseps system (for multiple shirts/locations/colors for the same art), maybe even JPG enhance, auto-vector (Spot only), vector art bitmap upscale (resolution increase), etc, etc, etc, etc.

This will all be at your fingertips when it's done. Most will be a click away.

And I've said it before and I'll say it again: This is not at all like what you've seen before. I'm sure the other guys did a bang up job, but I've not seen what I've seen in my own stuff, and I believe that is because it's really, really hard stuff. The math is very complex, but not tedious. I didn't have to program in 17000 range selections which get merged to channels with varying strengths. This is what I feel a lot of others are doing. It's an awful lot of work, but is very limited in its flexibility, and, despite the hard work, also in accuracy.

I'm hoping a few of the sep-needy will come by and be needy no more. I'm afraid a lot of them will get cold feet before pulling the trigger, tho. I'm not sure how long it'll take before word spreads (if it does what I think it'll do anyway) and that people will come to trust it. It always is a bit of a leap of faith, especially when it's a small job and not worthy of taking a risk on.

[Dottonedan]

I just had a thought about another nice feature specifically based on the art size.


If you have a feature that we can put in details of our print specifics like Mesh, (Ink type, Viscosity and shear rate), wether its thick, medium opacity or thin...We can better determine how much ink we will use on the specific job getting separated. THAT would be an added bonus.


You would have to research a little more about how these different variables affect the ink usage. For example, just mesh alone provides multiple variables even once you decide what mesh to use. A 156 mesh puts down medium ink (in general),....but you can coat that 156 mesh a different number of times (more or less #'s of coats) to get even more or less ink lay down.


This is the type of feedback you need to soak in from these guys. Could increase the salability of the already great product even more so. Like aI said, a lot of the sep program designers/owners./developers will present us with the end product and don't get feedback (until after it's done). Then they come out with versions 1.5, etc. a year or so later. Thats not a knock on them. It's just the normal process.


You're knowledge of separations and art and programing, are only a strong part of what you're doing here. If you were to create a product that considers all or many of these other variables (outside of the seps) that pertain to how they run an order....you could be the next Bill Gates or Steve Jobs of the screen printing world.

[DannyGruninger]

I'd like to jump back on and say that I was finally able to upload a file the other day and take a look. I was still having troubles but I'm sure it was just the browser I was using, my operating system, etc but most certainly it seems like the issues are coming from my end and not the sep engine. Since I only had about 2 minutes to quickly look at the file, I cannot give much input other then it looks very very promising! Seeing the control and ability it has to pull certain colors that typical programs struggle with I'm certainly impressed with what I did see. Going back to my original arguments of the program not being able to know "all the factors that we deal with on press" I still believe that will create some issues but I can see eventually being able to work through some to most of those "rules" that will be needed. All in all, I just wanted to jump back on here and give a pat on the back to the guy working on a project like this and trying to bring it to reality. I think the program can be super powerful and a huge benefit for all. I'm certainly willing to help do some testing and trials with the sep engine considering we have some really great screen printing art from our artist. Look forward to seeing where this goes, because out of everything I've seen this does get me excited and certainly looks promising.

[DDSol]

I was finally able to upload a file

Did you see what it would look like in 5 colors? My optimizer optimizes out the darker blue (car windows and name), which if you want it you can add to make 6 colors + UB, but in 5 colors, I think it looks great! That said, you made that blue different for a reason, and it's definitely better in 6 colors. Nonetheless, 5 or 6 colors, I think it looks pretty great, and I'm wondering what you think about it.

[DDSol]

Hi everyone! It has been a while, but I've not sat idle. I've worked all night (and the last weeks) to add more things to the developing sep system. You can now add and delete (drag to trash) inks/screens/films/seps/whatshouldthisbecalled and change order (drag), zoom to any spot (mouse wheel), zoom with a zoom-region rectangle (left mouse), and pan (right mouse), all of which is animated.

I've also been working on the login system. It'll be where you do not need an account to start, but your projects will be lost when you close the browser. However, when you sign up, or sign in, your current project(s) will be merged with your (possibly new) account. Also, everything works with ajax, so a page reload won't happen! Your account of course is used to store preferences and allow opening of earlier projects (to make seps for darks vs lights, for instance, or to get your seps for a reprint).

Also, I'll be supporting a master/user account (already working), where multiple users can use a main account, and they'll have privileges. This will be handy for companies that have several employees. Say, one gets belligerent (it happens). You can then just close their account, instead of having to change the (central) password and all users have to remember the new pass. This is just one place where it's very helpful. Others are to have both central (company wide) preferences and settings and per-user preferences and settings.

I've also made a message subsystem, and who cares about that . In any case, error handling and such will be smoother (but isn't yet).

All-in-all, I've made an awful lot of progress. I think what's next is to integrate the new login with the test page and to store project info there. Then it may be time for the back-end sep renderer, which I've been avoiding, because it's very hard. Then you'll be able to produce actual prints with it! Unfortunately, there's no settings yet, so when the renderer just gets done, it'll use some values that are guesstimations (Such as mesh count! Such as image size!). That means that you can't print it correctly unless you use the right mesh and upload your image as a 12" square png (at 300dpi, of course). Nonetheless, sepping for real becomes entirely possible at that point.

In the mean time, have a look at the new version and Comment, Comment, Comment! You should know that it is much easier to build something then it is to modify something. For one, it's duplicated effort, for two, there's much less incentive (a better version isn't near as big of an improvement compared to a "good" version as is a "good" version compared to nothing at all), and last, but not least, modifications introduce bugs, and may break components that depend on it. It's much harder to remember what I was doing before than it is to know what I just built. A small change often cascades into complete rewrites. To be clear, this has happened to the browser sep system at least 3 times already. If you think it's just my style of working, check out the Duke Nukem Forever development. 15 years they spent on that game, mainly because they started from scratch several times. In any case, the model I have right now is going to be finished as is. It's time the sep system gets published, I think.

This does mean that it's time, right now, to voice your opinion. If you think there's something you'd like to see when it's done, there's a much greater chance that I can weave it in if I take it into account from the get-go! In other words: I'm taking requests right now. speak now or forever hold your peace!

For those only reading this page, get your Browser Seps here. It's free to use and will be free all through the alpha and beta stages. This means you'll be able to print shirts using free top-of-the-line seps !

Thanks

[DDSol]

I notice some people are still uploading interlaced pngs. My system can't read interlaced pngs, not because they are hard to read, but because they violate the mandate that images must be processed sequentially in memory, or otherwise the server would crash on these huge images screen printers use. Interlaced images are stored with a small copy of the image, followed by parts of a larger copy, followed by even larger, etc, until all the image pixels are known. Unfortunately, this means going back-and-forth over the image as the file is loaded, so I can't easily (or quickly) load just the top of an image, for instance.

I will set up a separate server to do conversions later. For now, it's important that you only upload non-interlaced pngs. I'm sorry that there is no error. An error would be nice. Now it just says "loading..." forever. That said, if it takes forever, then Don't Just Wait. Check your image. It's still in alpha, so bear with me .

[DDSol]

I forgot to mention this, and it is kind of important or you might get frustrated here... You cannot delete any inks/colors/seps/films/screens/channels/wheteveryouwanttocallthesethings if you only have 4, because the minimum number of colors is 4. That's a limitation of the engine generator right now and is related to the math of it all... I will add the necessary math for 3 colors, 2 colors and even 1 color later (1 color... is that a sep?). It also does not do grayscale (!!!). I mean, you can add a gray and a white and black and sep in grayscale, but you must also add at least 2 other colors. Again, this is related to the math, in particular, to the dimensionality of the print gamut (which is of course related to the image gamut). For this same reason, it has trouble when you upload grayscale images, although I haven't seen anybody do this.

Not that anyone cares about the math, of course... I'm just sayin'... there's an actual reason behind it.

[DDSol]

Today we have grayscale, sepia, and a host of other options, simply by selecting different inks!

Hi everyone! Ignore that last post about 4 color minimum and math being hard! Not that it isn't hard, but you won't have to put up with it anymore. I worked all night last night (5pm to 9am) and the result: You can now work with as little as 1 color! That might be useful if you have a transparent 1 color logo that you want to halftone, or just view what it would look like when halftoned. Other than that, 1 color doesn't really sep, but at least it's allowed now!

Also, Very Important, it handles flat color spaces and linear color spaces! What's a linear color space? Well, grayscale is a linear color space. You can add 6 grays if you like, for a very smooth print! You can add Just Those Grays that your image needs and it seps Perfectly! It really is awesome! A flat color space is for instance a white, a black (maybe 3 grays) and a color. It is also any space with 3 colors (unless they're all in a line, like grayscale). It's totally awesome!

Noting the awesomeness of it all... there may still be math issues which make the whole thing crash. It's an alpha test! An awesome alpha test!

And yes, that's some big hype for a system which doesn't produce any printable seps. But guess what? The new system that does the 0, 1,2 and 3 dimensional color spaces is built so I can reuse it in the final renderer. This way I can make sure the formulas on screen are the exact ones used for the final sep renderer (with the exception of halftones, because they are special for screen preview). And so what this means is that I'm now ready to roll out the final renderer. Maybe I'll have a prototype running by next week and then you can all do some awesome prints for Real Clients. Don't forget to send me some print photos, as long as you don't mind me putting them up at some point for demo purposes.

Is anyone still reading this? If so, Leave a Message! I'm excited about it (duh!), and if you are too, go ahead and say so.

For those who are ready to use it now, here's a Roadmap:

• Add the final sep renderer
• Render package generator (which puts your seps and job info in a zip for download so you can make awesome shirts)
• Add job info stuff (the input, storage, processing and rendering, it's a job-and-a-half)
• Rendering registration marks
• Lots of settings (halftone line count, mesh count, final resolution, ink opacity, color adjustment sliders, project manager, etc)
• Interface design
• Updated/more accurate color sets and more of them (especially inks)
• And ink mix calculator (maybe)
• And more...

Feedback is appreciated! If you hate something, need something, or have ideas you want to be turned to reality, let me know.

[DDSol]

If you get the old system (You can't delete inks when there's only 4 there), then this means your browser is caching the old version of the app. You have to clear your cache to make it work.

I'll be changing this later so I can update without giving users a manual to follow .

[Dottonedan]

I'm reading it an Im excited about it!  Can't wait to actually get seps back to my computer so I can review the actual sep file results and have them printed.

My guess is that you will be providing one of the most important breakthroughs of our industry in a very long time. A fantastic jump forward for all of us. I just hope the quality is truley what you are indicating.