HOW TO SEPARATE SIMULATED PROCESS FOR SCREEN PRINTING

[Dottonedan]

HOW TO SEPARATE SIMULATED PROCESS FOR SCREEN PRINTING.

People always ask, how did I do that?
How? I build good selection areas to be used as tools.


Here is my process. It’s random for each job and often, far more time consuming and complicated then anyone wants to learn to do themselves when you could be investing your time into building more sales, so just send it to me.

I make changes along the way of my process, and don’t follow a specific procedure. That’s why it’s so hard to build a good tutorial. I don’t always do the same things all of the time. I work based on the art and what I need to do for that job with the quickest way in mind. Each design is unique in my approach.

Having said that, there are some commonalities of how I separate. They are listed below. 

Hopefully, there is no prep work to be done and I have a layered high resolution file of 300ppi or higher, at or near the print size. If not, additional time is needed and additional charge.

With a good “ready to separate”file, I start by making a copies that will be a CMYK conversion, a flat RGB with a black background, and a grey-scale copy from that.  With my CMYK conversion, I choose one or more of at least 5 different CMYK conversion color preferences. This is based on experience and what I need from them.  Each will build the CMYK seps differently from one extreme to another. Each one will build the seps pushing color more into its main color in gradual steps. With the last one being the most pushed or contains the most Yellow solid areas, the most Magenta solid areas and the most Cyan. When it has the most This, still gives me a soft halftone smooth transition from one color to the next but in more of an isolated area (most all yellow being closer to solid) in that separation. I can use this as a tool to make good yellow selections. The opposite of that leans more towards what you might see in a regular CMYK separations.  Here, the colors all seem to blend heavily, with halftones everywhere.

Using the above is totally unlike pulling from Color range where you Can see abrupt selections that provide only unattractive color drop offs that leave fragmented drops from one color area to another. I try to avoid using color range for pulling smooth blends. The only time I might use Color range is for quick selections within a solid color area. I manually separate or pull elements or sections from those RGB, Grey-scale and CMYK conversions. A good separation is mostly built by good smooth transitions from one color to the next. I start to get that form the above. It's all about the smoothness, and the right amount of color in key areas.

In addition to a good color procedure, is a good base. You can create a good base manually from a greyscale, but there are other conversion methods that people prefer doing as well. The conversion methods can be the quick fix to getting you there faster, but not always the best option.

What makes a good base, is the shadow areas (what is essentially the brighter areas, being popped up or punched up enough on the base under the colors to support them well on dark color grounds. (grounds being the shirt color). The lighter areas of the base will be the darkest on the dark shirt colors. For these, I usually try to use curves and slope up smoothly with a curve at the light areas of the curve (the shadow areas in art). This allows the inks to fall more so to the shirt color versus being supported by or showing much of any white ink.

From the above files, I will select all, copy, and paste into new channel and make a few duplicates of that pasted selection, and then start to create my selection tools or "Masks".

To get selection areas, I use various tools all of the time.

Curves, Levels, Dodge and Burn tool, Paint brush tool (both solid brush and airbrush), Magic wand, Pen tool, working in Channels, and occasionally the Color Range tool.

I use the burn and doge tool to fill in and clean up or open up tighter areas.  In addition, I will use the pen tool to draw and build a selection. Another frequently used tool for building selections is the brush tool, painting or filling in either in black or white on the channel.  All of this is creating "selections" to use a tool to select inside that area and copy from the greyscale channel selection mask, paste that to a new channel with a pantone color.  I then adjust as needed for the shirt color in mind, and how much of the base is needed for that area.

Lastly, there are times when I am using the airbrush tool to build selections. I may paint with the airbrush to obtain softer edges so that the soft t edges may make its way over into another color appearing to be more natural and soft. This, requires more patience and art skill.

Doing all of this is providing more accurate "control" of your separations. You guide the seps (push pixels around and add or subrtact from areas to where you want them to be, versus an auto sep program that gives you somthing that is often missleading as the final end all. Even with the auto seps, you should consider doing the above. When I start from my CMYK, RGB and Greysale conversions, those are esentually similar to starting with an auto separation.





Thanks
Dan Campbell
Dot-Tone-Designs
Art@designsbydottone.com

Please provide an all vector file as pdf, eps or ai, All raster files (Photoshop) at or near print size, and at or near 300ppi (Pixels Per Inch) resolution, and in layers (not flattened). Please review your art on both a black and a white background to assure your file is set up properly. Additional charges for file prep/clean up may apply @ $60.00 per hr, and charged at 15 min increments.

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