Separation Studio - Tips, Tricks, Questions?

[Homer]

screw X7, nobody wants that.. ....will index seps be in the update to SSR? any manuals or new tuts for ssr?

sorry to derail this thread....

[Full-SpectrumSeparator]

Yep.   

[AdvancedArtist]

You gotta get comfortable with SimpleSeps it karate kicks Separation Studio in the nuts..
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What opinion do you have of what either of them do to Ultraseps?  That's what I use.  Just curious.

SimpleSeps and SeparationStudio both remove the Saturation-white and the Brightness-black from the colors, leaving the pure Hue to work with leaving the white and black screens to regulate the highlights, shadows and midtones of the color.. SimpleSeps gives you the option to sep to adjustme layers allowing you to edit your image non destructively..

In SeparationStudio once the pull is made there is no adding of information back to a channel (you could move info from one channel to the next, quite messy)

SeparationStudio only mixes the 6 primary hues to make up the tertiary colors.. SimpleSeps will allow you to pick your tertiary colors and assign it to a dedicated screen before the pull (manually or automatically)..

SimpleSeps can pull seps in halftones-interlocked(if you please) SeparationStudio pulls in HSB (I think I said that already)

SimpleSeps does halftone grayscale in monotone (b,w,1gray), duotone (b,w,2grays), tritone (b,w,3grays) SeparationStudio pulls in HSB..

SeparationStudio editing tools cannot even stand in the light of PhotoShop's tool set which happens to be SimpleSeps platform..

I do not know UltraSeps but I own QuickSeps Pro.. And from the abbreviated features I gave of SimpleSeps, QuickSeps has no advantages..

You've got UltraSeps and so would be able to compare and decide the advantages of the two programs..

Jeff is a good dude and very committed to his program.. A bit too anal about things being perfect..

Tom is very passionate but keeps a full plate and spreads himself too thin- A visionary..

Both developers try to sell/debate/argue/cuss and fight for the idea of HSB separations.. They sell the logic.. You don't have to buy the plugin because the show you how to do it manually.. I've never seen any other developer going as far as they have gone and I'm sorry a lot of people miss that point..

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My God Star you are have read us like a book. Impressive really.

[AdvancedArtist]

Well what are we looking at.. I have no idea I am basically blind in this digital color space. But that is just the begining.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5s1Ga4bC4A&feature=youtu.be

[mimosatexas]

Uuuuggghh...

Not to derail this thread even further, but your posts and that video illustrate exactly what I'm talking about.  Not only did you spell my name wrong in your response (i don't care, but it's illustrative of the care and respect with which you seem to always respond to people), but you clearly didn't even read (or understand?) any of my posts.  I literally said that Separation Studio was clunky and did a poor job of representing color in the post at the top of the last page, so the answer to your question about me understanding its issues would be "yes".  You also seem to have missed all the discussion of using custom palettes to compensate for some of those issues.  You also seem to have missed how the pointer is essentially always an eyedropper in SepStudio as it shows you the color information in percentages within the palette on the right of the screen in SepStudio, not just as a RGB/CMYK/etc value, which is much more useful on press than knowing its math in a digital colorspace.

I'm not arguing that your software isn't useful or superior in some ways to other options out there, lots of users I respect on this forum use it and seem to think so, but the way you respond to people in basically every thread I've ever seen you participate in makes me less than enthusiastic about giving you money.  You always hype yourself and your products while saying the same thing about bringing truth and science to color and imply people don't understand what you're preaching.  It's condescending and doesn't further the discussion in any meaningful way.  HSB/HWB is not rocket science.  It also isn't perfect, which should be clear to anyone with any experience on press.  You can't just make a correct dark red by overprinting red on black without understanding so many other variables.  Often digital color is simply not that representative of physical color, something discussed at length in this thread you started: http://www.theshirtboard.com/index.php?topic=7804.0.  The math very often doesn't tell the whole story.

The comment on your lack of support is only something I have witnessed in threads, with your customers requesting tutorials or bug fixes and getting only cryptic replies instead of help, including this one it would seem...

[screenxpress]

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[AdvancedArtist]

I will deal with the debatable and personal issues later but let us begin with the fundamentals of color.



This is where the rubber hits the road dealing with color. Well with the exception of Brightness and Saturation but in my understanding/opinion the foundation of color gets its traction in the wonderful HUE. If the application or understanding you are working with in anyway destroys, changes or shifts HUE. You will have to spend unneeded to time correct such destruction. We as an Industry tend to eye ball things I did this myself for many years. But now I realize that eye balling color can be compared to letting clients walk into pay bills and just letting them toss some money on the table and saying well that looks like enough.

So what are we looking at in the image above? If you cannot make out the differences just pop it into a standard Graphics app and float your eye dropper around. Which one is not like the other?

What critical color reproduction information has been moved or changed? How will that effect your separations? How might that effect your business?

[AdvancedArtist]

Looking at it with something that is more obvious. This is a revealed FULL HUE comparison, one is mathematically correct the other has been severely damaged resulting in color loss. The color destruction can be a bigger issue than you may perceive at first. You see all colors can be separated with 100% accuracy based on Color, Black and White or Hue Saturation and Brightness all of which have numerical values in digital color. If the Color or HUE has be destroyed (moved or changed digitally) you can no longer work with the color accurately with digital color math. This is particularly critical in colors and color ranges that blend. If blends are destroyed there is no way to achieve accurate color separations or reproduction.

Mathematically it is like this 36 - 13 = 23 but what if my shiny $800 calculator turns 13 into 21? BAM the math no longer works correctly. For instance in the left image we can see that a significant percentage of blend from blue to cyan is gone, so that/those mathematic or digital color value(s) have been moved or destroyed. My ability to divide/separate the digital color/digital math accurately has been taken away from me. Further my ability to reproduce the color on a printing press has also been compromised.



Color and the business of screen printing. If your separation application is not digitally correct or you or your separators understanding of how to work with standard graphics tools pushes you into tools like this application here are some of the ways it might effect your business.

Separations are inaccurate.
Separations take hours and not minutes.
Separations are done with excessive colors 12 or 14 colors when 5 or 7 colors could have printed it as well or better.
12 color print requires 65% more ink per print than a 7 color print reducing profit on the job.
12 color print that could have been a 7 color takes more time to set up and register.
12 color print that could have been a 7 or even a 5 color print reduces the soft hand on the garment.

You bid a 12 color print and your color smart competition bids a 5 color print. You loose the JOB, the CLIENT and the CASH.

Your color smart competition starts to take more and more of your business by undercutting you while they make more profit because they charge more per color but reproduce color better with less colors.
This list could be carried over into other you loose money and clients issues.. but I hope/think we get the point.

I will get into more soon....