Recently, Tom at Advanced Artist released SimpleSeps Raster (
http://advancedtshirts.com/products/simpleseps-raster.html), which he touts as a way to separate any image within Corel Draw. I read up on it and decided to give it a whirl to see how things worked out.
In a nutshell, it works by separating the image down to an HSB (hue, saturation, brightness) extract, then producing separations from there, which results in plates for an underbase white, highlight white, black, green, yellow, magenta, red, blue, and cyan. From there, you can begin reducing your colors to suit your needs. Its an interesting method.
For my test, I set out to test three things:
1. Ease of use
2. Accuracy
3. Does the program do what Tom says it will.
Since ease of use was one thing I wanted to test, I limited myself to three of the multiple video tutorials Tom offers on the program and also decided I wouldn't tweak the separations the program generated. I'd just go with the raw output.
So with these parameters in mind, off I went to google images to find a crappy jpg to toss at the program. Here is what I picked:
This was a typical jpg, 72dpi, etc, etc. I imported this into Draw X6, resampled it to 800dpi at final size, ported it to photopaint, added some blur to soften the lines, then resampled again down to 200dpi. This gave me not great art to work with but something that was at least manageable. Then I ran it through the SimpleSeps Raster program. After about 7 minutes total, I had the final separated image broken down into four monochrome images: Black, red, yellow, and cyan. Looking at the monochromes, I could tell they could use some tweaking, but I stuck to my rules and didn't touch them. Sent them through Accurip at 55lpi, 22.5 angle, and made my screens.
I wasn't going to mix ink colors for what was a simple test, so I used standard union colors. Golden yellow for the yellow, scarlet red for the red and bright blue for the cyan. I wasn't expecting much, considering separations really follow the "Garbage in, Garbage out" rule, and the file I gave it was pretty crappy. Here was the print result, taken with my crappy cell phone camera:
Seeing the final result I can tell where the monochromes needed to be tweaked. The cyan and yellow both need to be pulled back some. I got quite a bit of yellow pollution is areas that should have been white, which I think resulted in a duller print than it should have been. Also, if I had used colors actually called for, especially the cyan and probably at least a primrose yellow if not a process yellow, the result would have been better. All in all however, considering all of 25 minutes was spent on setting this up, I was impressed. I think the result was comparable to what any other separation program on the market would have generated. Keep in mind, this was the raw data the program generated. I spent no time adjusting or tweaking the result.
So, for the final verdict:
1. Ease of use. Check, this was extremely easy to use. It would take some time to learn the ins and outs of the program, but that is true for any program.
2. Accuracy. Check again, with some tweaking to the raw results.
3. Does the program do what Tom says it will do. Check. It works exactly as advertised. I dunno if this program means the death of Adobe products as the industry standard as Tom has claimed in other places, but it is an effective and powerful addition to Draw.
SimpleSeps Raster, like all automatic separation programs, can never take the place of a human separator, but we all know it is impractical to send every piece out to a separator. Priced at $249.99, I think SimpleSeps Raster would be a worthwhile addition to any small shop.
