Butt-cheek Separations

[CreativeClod]

Hi people,
Im having some difficulty with transparency opagity. Im using UltraSEps, and when I send the seps to the Epson1430, most often the subtlety of one of the colors is so faint on the film it doesnt rea,ly burn all that well. Im using a home made uv led strip exposure unit. I dont have any problems i cant comprehend with it expcept this one? I was hoping maybe someone had some Christmas insight on this they could pass along.  Thanks for reading everyone! 

[ebscreen]

Picture of the problem might be worth a thousand words.

[Frog]

My first thought is that one of the colors may indeed be so "subtle' that the poster does not have the ability to hold it in the burn. Clod, in your tests, how small of a percentage dot can you hold?

[ebscreen]

What I'm wondering if it is indeed a halftoned color, or something more sinister like clogged nozzles or a rip issue.

Adding the homemade LED strips is only going to complicate the issue, so I strongly encourage establishing a baseline
with solid block art and moving on from there.

[Dottonedan]

Hello,


There are many people that use the Epson 1430 but they print films in many different ways it seems.  Some print straight to that using AccuRip, and are aware of all of the (two areas) to control dot gain and ink lay down.  Others use and rely more on the separation software to dictate film output control. For those, I don't know how it works exactly. Some require RGB layers to be intact, while other methods don't and you must remove the RGB or CMYK channels (if printing from Photoshop). I don't know how those handle vector files.


With some printing solid, and some not, I might be more inclined to think that the issue you are having is based on the art file and color makeup. When it happens, go back into the art file and check that offending color (makeup).  How is it built? is the color a CMYK color or is it a Pantone (PMS) or custom color. The best results come from SPOT color modes.

[Sbrem]

None of your channels in should have actual transparency, as that setting in the Channels dialog is for viewing. Click on the problem channel and run over the area with the cursor, and on your Info palette, you can see your percentage, maybe it's just too light, say 5% for you to hold those dots with your setup. A field of LED's makes it a little more problematic. A good point source makes for better halftone screens, generally speaking.

Steve.

[screenxpress]

Another thought.....since there's no visual to work with.

When using the automated Sep products, many times very light Channels are created that are not necessarily needed to print. 

I use Ultraseps too and after each Sep run, I work from the top down checking/viewing Channels while comparing to the source artwork.  I also check each Channel individually and many times I find that I don't need to use ALL of the generated Channels to produce a comparative printed product. 

Also I check if a light channel can be merged with a predominant channel?  For example, if a Blue and Turquoise Channel are created and the Turquoise is extremely light, I'll consider merging it with the Blue and dropping the Turquoise completely even if I have to alter the Curves or Color a little, etc. 

Sometimes it's amazing how close you can come to the desired results using a minimal number of Channels/Screens. 

[Dottonedan]

and as ScreenXpress started into, the blending or merging of one light color into a similar color is the tweaking or fine tuning point of separations. Wether it be Auto or manual.  When doing the fine tuning using an auto sep program, just make a selection of that lighter color (like turquoise) and activate the other color with the most content that is similar (like light blue) and within that selection of the turquoise, you add that in on the blue using something like the levels or curves tool. When you do add it in, don't do 100% but rather like half or 50% (as a very basic example).  That 50% will more so represent the turquoise.  Then, you can also delete from other channels that may interfere with "simulating"a turquoise".  Like deleting from any of the red channels. Than Turquoise is brighter than blue, so you beef up the base and add that to the base. I'd use 100% solid of the turquoise selection onto the base.  Thats tweaking at it's most basic form.