Computers and Software > Separation Programs

Separation Studio - Tips, Tricks, Questions?

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mimosatexas:
edit: I put this in the wrong subforum because I'm dumb.  Can you move it Frog?  Thanks!

I am trying out Separation Studio after trying T-seps and Ultraseps and being mostly unimpressed, and so far I REALLY like certain things about it over the photoshop plugins.  Specifically the fact that you can quickly and easily create a custom ink palette before opening and sepping your image, then adjust the individual ink colors after the seps have run if needed, so if you have spots that are pantone colors you can sep fades and blends elsewhere using those specific colors (and add others as needed).  Pretty great feature, especially for someone like me who is limited to six screens including base and highlight white and black if necessary.  In other words, a lot of my jobs are limited to 3 or 4 "colors" and if one or two of those are used as a spot, the other separation softwares fail miserably at adjusting to that limitation and I have to spend a bunch of time testing crap in photoshop and on press.

I want to get as much out of the trial as possible, and had two specific questions right off the bat:

1. Is there a way to adjust the strength of the saturation and desaturation tools beyond the small drop down menu?  They seem to have a set strength which works fine on areas with specific concentrations of a color that fit their predefined ranges, but in gradients or complex areas, it fails pretty hard.  I can always adjust this in photoshop after the fact, but if I can do it in SS I would like to know how.

2. Can anyone shed some light on the generate black features?  I have googled and watched a few videos and read a few tutorials, and these features are mostly glossed over.

Any other tips or tricks that make the software more effective from those of you who use it often are also appreciated.  I'm not looking for a one click solution, just a way to save time doing the menial bullshit so I can spend my time masking and adjusting instead of clicking the same buttons and making after the fact adjustments to my palettes.  Thanks!

jvanick:
you can use the tools on the left (lassos, box, that drop of ink looking thing) to selectively saturate and desaturate specific parts of your image... I always forget that they're there, but sometimes they really help.

I too like the fact that you can use any ink pallet...

another cool feature, is setting the 'ground' color (color of shirt)... gildan publishes the pantone colors for their shirts, so you can use the shirt color in the art itself.

on the generate black features, I'd love to hear about better info on how to use them as well... it seems a lot of times, we use the skeletal black image.

I've also been playing around with using sepstudio to do my seperations, and then use discharge ink for each screen to avoid the underbase layer.. depending on the art, sometimes it works really well.

here's one we printed today that was sep'd using sepstudio:  5 screens total...


(The blueish tones are intentional and the shirt color (metro blue) was chosen by the customer to pull everything together), came out quite nicely.

mimosatexas:
nice print!  I understand the drop/saturation tool, but I was wondering if there was a way to adjust it's power.  In photoshop for example, I can grab the dodge or burn tool, set it to 5% or 10% and make minor saturation adjustments, but it seems like the strength in SepStudio is always the same.  I guess using lasso and adjusting high low percentages with it are probably the best way available if you can't adjust the strength of the brush, or just using photoshop.

Can you explain how you adjust art for discharge using the program?  I understand dropping the base white, but do you bump/flatten the top white to compensate when your art contains pastels/light hues?

starchild:
In SS the saturation and desaturation brushes gives you the option to target highlights, midtones and shadow areas but.. Here's the thing, because separation is in it's very nature, removing information from an image, there is only so much saturation you can add to the already subtracted info..

If you wish to add back info to a color channel that you feel should not have been assigned to another color channel, then first find the missing info in one of the other color channel, duplicate it, use the eraser tool and remove the info you do not need, then use the apply to channel function to move the modified duplicated channel info to the channel that is missing the info.. Whew..

For example I you think that an area in the red channel should not have been sepd to the yellow channel, then duplicate the yellow, erase the parts you don't need then apply it to the red.. Remember to desaturate the original yellow area where you moved the info from.

Also don't just depend on the visuals to make things optimal.. The vue rite swatches on the right is the heavy lifter of this program.. Use it to view the ink deposit density that will be printed onto the shirt.. You may find yourself desaturating more often than saturating.

The claim is the higher the res of the image the better the image would sep and look.. But not every image that pops tell the story.. Sometimes you may be after a dingy look and a resized 72dpi image will do just fine..

Sent using Tapatalk

mimosatexas:
Nice tip on the duplicate/merge channel option!  Thanks for the info on the Vuerite swatches.  I had started paying attention to those, and noticed some pretty funky stuff on the default seps it outputs.  Interesting info and definitely helpful when cleaning up art.  I'm not sure it is worth $900 to me right now, but I can't find another program or plugin that allows the custom palette for less, so it may be my best option when I have the funds.  I did a bunch of research yesterday on creating custom multichannel files in photoshop and was shocked at just how weak that are of the program is...

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