Separation Studio - Tips, Tricks, Questions?

[mimosatexas]

Glad I could enlighten a regular user. 

Honestly the ink mapping feature is the only real selling point of the software in my opinion.  A lot of the rest of it is clunky, especially the saturation tools.  The "preview" of the art after adjustments is also pretty unrealistic.  It fails pretty hard at showing the interaction between underbase and top colors, but does fine with color interactions.  Something like yellow on a black shirt where you want to fade to a darker yellow without another screen isn't well represented.  Even with a halftoned base, it will knockout the yellow in an attempt to darken it, instead of relying on the base to darken it, which essentially OVER darkens it by a lot.  I guess the underlying issue is the software has no ability to input ink opacity in the way that solidty in photoshop channels attempts to mimic. 

Also, unless you art is on a transparent background, the custom palette breaks pretty hard if you try to combine it with a custom ground/shirt color.  I tried sepping a design yesterday that was just black, yellow, and white on a red shirt, and it turned the red into a weird tan with yellow and white in it and almost erased the black.  The result was weird as hell.  The only time I could see this being a problem is when doing grungy stuff where you are creating the art with some of the blend modes in photoshop that rely on the background to knock out white, but I found out you can copy the layers to a new file, flatten, desaturate, invert (if needed) and ctrl click the RGB channel to select out the background without losing information and get full transparency.  That step was a revelation for me as I use the blend modes pretty often.

I have been basically using SepStudio to sep into custom channels and make the quick adjustments, which saves a good half hour at least on more complex art and on some of the simpler stuff or for unpicky clients, it does a pretty decent "one click" sep (with some quick channel adjustments) that only has issues you would notice if you knew what to look for.  I find I almost always would prefer to open in photoshop for masking to saturate and cleanup, and fix issues with opacity related to the underbase.

For black, I noticed the "detailed" option seemed to be the best on some designs without lots of low opacity detail, and sharper seemed better on those as it pulled more information and gives you more room to adjust the highs and lows within the software.

[Dottonedan]

Quick question, anyone know how to choke the underbase either in sepstudio, or in photoshop, in a way that only affects the outside edges of areas where overlayed color will meet open shirt?  In other words, it preserves all of the halftoned fades within the art, but chokes in a pixel or two around the outsides?

This answer applies more to using Photoshop.
I use two different methods when possible. The possible part is (when I have a layered file and I can treat the type one way and the gradations another. For example, I will take my underbase and adjust curves. Here, I will use an S curve but it's not large and steep. You need a smooth soft transition. The intent is to burn out the highlight (small dots) so that they are tucked under the top ink colors (on fade outs).  Then, as you get into the 3/qtr tones and shadow tones, (those are your brighter areas) and you can beef that up to be more solid. For example, I might take my 90% tone and drag it out towards the 80 or so, making sure to leave it in a S curve from highlight to shadow.


For the type or any solid areas, curved don't do much to cut back except trim off some fuzzy edge, but that might not be enough. so, I like to then make a selection of that line art or type and will (CONTRACT) by 2 pixels at 300 ppi.  1 pixels is not enough at 300 in my opinion/experience. The lower the rez, (e.g.) 200ppi, the smaller the contract needs to be (since it's a bigger pixel).  For 200 pixels, I contract 1 pixel.  For 600 rez, I contract 3-4 pixels.  Get it?


For the top whites, I don't do anything with the contract. I let that print over.  Of course, tho, I do adjust curved to burn out all other areas that aren't pure bright white except for some pastel like areas.

[shellyky]

open your image in photoshop and eyedropper any spot colors and/or any specific ink colors you would like to use in your design.  open separation studio and go to Edit>Ink Mapping.  On the right side there is a drop down and to the right a button that says New.  Click that and name it whatever you want.  On the left side at the bottom, click the plus sign.  A window will pop up that lets you add a custom color.  Do this for all the spot colors or custom colors you want.  If you have only one or two custom colors from spots, select them and think about which of the 10 default colors you want to replace with those custom colors, click the little >> button to move the custom color over.  If you have a completely custom palette, you can replace all of the colors, or replace two or three or four, then make the remaining colors white or black to limit your palette.  Click the Default button in the top right, then click save.  Now open you image and it should separate it using the palette you created instead of the default one.

I just tried this....doesnt seem to be picking up my color at all...i did a brown...its showing up on my color list of seps, but there isn't anything in the image, its just blank on that color

[mimosatexas]

is it pulling that area into another channel or is it just missing?

[shellyky]

yeah its just missing...it's shown down on the bottom as a channel, but there isn't any data in that screen...not even one pixel

[mimosatexas]

weird.  I haven't had that issue yet.  Try a slightly different color, but is still not somewhere else in your design.

[shellyky]

ill keep trying I get the gist of it so thats all that matters haha

[screenxpress]

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.

[mimosatexas]

SimpleSeps may be great, but from what I've seen of the guys selling and supporting it, I think I'd rather steer clear...

[starchild]

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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[mimosatexas]

All I have seen on multiple forums is them talking down to people like they are the only ones that can understand relatively simple color theory, and people complaining that they don't respond to emails or phone calls related to problems or questions about their software.  The condescending attitude is a huge turn off (especially when many of us wholly understand what they are proclaiming as "revolutionary"), as is the lack of support.

[starchild]

Well we all our point of view..

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[AdvancedArtist]

All I have seen on multiple forums is them talking down to people like they are the only ones that can understand relatively simple color theory, and people complaining that they don't respond to emails or phone calls related to problems or questions about their software.  The condescending attitude is a huge turn off (especially when many of us wholly understand what they are proclaiming as "revolutionary"), as is the lack of support.

Well this is a wonderful post and without talking down lets look at the facts.

Tell me Minos, were you able to identify or discern the very simple color theory problems with Separation Studio during your trail? Is arguing for the truth and scientific fact condescending? If you  understood what we have been training relating to color then you would have identified the problems with Separation Studio within seconds of opening the application and loading an image. But you did not convey any such understanding in your posts in this thread.

Lets start with color I will deal with the support accusations next.

So tell me/us what are the simple color theory problems with Separation Studio?

[Homer]

TOM...updates to SSR?...we want to know....

[AdvancedArtist]

Working on that and testing and testing and getting X7 updates in order.. the next round goes beyond the color we already have that nailed but found allot of things in halftones that have never been dealt with and should have been like 10 years ago.