Help a Process Newb.

[Stinkhorn Press]

What is process printing anyway?

A customer supplied me with the attached owl art, asking for a quote while claiming the art was 4 colors. We replied as per our usual that we could reduce it down to 4 (spot) colors, but it would look better at least 5, if not 6 (spot) colors. To which she replied "can't you print 4 clr process?"

We have printed some jobs that both Dan and Scott have sepped for us that resulted in a whole gamut of color ranges. Customer expectations were low on those jobs and we printed using the mesh and inks we normally spot print with and they have turned out ok - good enough for the customer but not "good" by my estimation of how good it COULD look and what variables I should be controlling.

We have a 6/6 manual press, and a 8/10 not-yet-up-and-running automatic that MIGHT be in service in time to print these. I am totally fine with having a Scott or Dan sep things like this, it just never really occurred to me me to separate spot color/vector based art like this as not a simple spot (by reducing the art by hand to spot colors that will come closest).

1. with 6 (maybe 7) screen spots would you print this as a process print?
2. what details are different/important when printing beyond spot colors?

[Underbase37]

This would look best printed with spot colors...as you know

Murphy

[blue moon]

this will not look good if printed with 4CP. It wold end u p being too grainy since you have large flat areas. Simulated process is the way to go. Get a quote on the seps and tell the customer what it needs to be. They can take it or leave it. Don't set yourself up for a failure!

pierre

[Sbrem]

Ditto on spot colors, you can sep it with PS, too bad the safety orange and machine gold are so close, and would recommend widening the gap between the two, but I could see gold, orange, yellow, blue, white and black, with some serious planning...
Also, there is a lot of good reading on 4-color process out there, the way it's done on paper is a good start to search, then see how we have to modify the idea to get it to work on shirts. As a pseudo-geek, I always found it fascinating.


Steve

[ScreenFoo]

Maybe if it was going on white shirts...

[Stinkhorn Press]

this will not look good if printed with 4CP. It wold end u p being too grainy since you have large flat areas. Simulated process is the way to go. Get a quote on the seps and tell the customer what it needs to be. They can take it or leave it. Don't set yourself up for a failure!

pierre

Part of this is ignorance, both from the customer, and myself. She suggested 4CP. I barely understand the differences, and what exactly qualifies as "process" in the first place. 4CP is always CMYK? Sim process is same idea but using whatever number and shade of colors would best get you to an end point?
We did let her know that CMYK wasn't going to work with that print, on a gray shirt and she'd probably be looking at paying for 6 screens being printed if went that route.

I don't think there is any way to get close to what they want without using AT LEAST all 6 color stations on our press.

Ditto on spot colors, you can sep it with PS, too bad the safety orange and machine gold are so close, and would recommend widening the gap between the two, but I could see gold, orange, yellow, blue, white and black, with some serious planning...
Steve

That would lose the brown of the owl, or is some combination of those tones likely to get me near "owlish brown" in this instance?

In situations similar to this, I have always fallen back on getting or making "clean enough" vector art and reducing it to 6-7-8-9 colors and anything over the 6 limit making up out of the available 6. With something like this, would I be better off stepping it in a bitmap program instead (and if so, that will require sending it out - my PS skills need major improvements) - and the problem at that point is getting a good seps guy to be handcuffed by our inks (or mix almost every color that might be a better match to his eye).

[Dottonedan]

Most customers will assume you are printing 4 color process because that is all they have ever heard of. They think everything printed is 4 color process.  Try explaining this to a customer when you also offer DTG printing. LOL.  Assure them that SIMULATED PROCESS or Spot color with halftone blending using more colors....will be far more accurate for the image representation on the tee.

1 Base white
-Flash-
2 Yellow
3 Gold
4 Red
5 Blue
6 Black.

I think the thing you need to do (when printing halftones) is to first assure that you are able to hold all of the dots that you can. Like down to the 3-4% dots in a 55lpi and still have a cured stencil.
Are your films opaque enough?  Thin films can cause issues with proper exposure. (Hold them up to the light...if you can see trough them, maybe look at ways to darken them.

Higher mesh uses less emulsion...and gives you the ability to hold better image detail. So if you normally coat all screens at 2:2,  try backing off one coat for the higher mesh (but then make sure to do an exposure test on that also. You need cured screens that hold fine detail like 55lpi and 4% dots.

Then look at your inks. If you printed the sim process seps using the regular inks for spot colors and if (both Scott and myself called out for thin inks), then your prints may have not come out as planned. You need thinned out inks to flow thru higher mesh (and the thin inks help the blending) to create other colors.

Also, consider how you are printing these halftones on press.  You work these a little differently than you do flat solid spot colors.  You print using high mesh, tight (or new) screens and you use harder squeegees like a 70 or 70/90/70 and you keep your angle up more vertical to slice the ink onto the TOP of the shirt. Don't drive it in with excess pressure. You may also find that you might need to stroke a little faster.

The base white, you can lay down heavier, but all of the top colors should be intended to be laid down thin. Think of it as being translucent. You need your bottom color to show through the top colors a little so to speak.

[Sbrem]

Maybe if it was going on white shirts...

He shows it on gray, and doesn't have enough press for the highlight white, it's not what I would want to do, but with those restrictions we could pull that off...

Steve

[ScreenFoo]

Maybe if it was going on white shirts...

He shows it on gray, and doesn't have enough press for the highlight white, it's not what I would want to do, but with those restrictions we could pull that off...

Steve

Yep, and even if it was on white I'd still say 'Maybe'. 
It all depends on expectations...

[Sbrem]

Maybe if it was going on white shirts...

He shows it on gray, and doesn't have enough press for the highlight white, it's not what I would want to do, but with those restrictions we could pull that off...

Steve

Yep, and even if it was on white I'd still say 'Maybe'. 
It all depends on expectations...

A lot of customers don't see as well as we, that is, us pros, do. Subtleties that make us nuts ofter go unnoticed... I'd like to add green and a second white

Steve

[Stinkhorn Press]

thanks Dan! that sort of advice is quite useful.

...SIMULATED PROCESS or Spot color with halftone blending...

is there are place where these are considered totally different animals, or does the one pretty much blend into the other? Where does spot with halftone blending stop and "sim process" begin?

[Stinkhorn Press]

Are your films opaque enough?  Thin films can cause issues with proper exposure. (Hold them up to the light...if you can see trough them, maybe look at ways to darken them.

I'm 3 weeks into a new-to-me epson 4800.
I'm running ink (dye from inkjetcarts) in one channel. Using AccuRip. At 720x720 resolution I'm getting real nice (for us) dot shape/size BUT at the highest setting of droplet weight, it is more see-through than I like.
I might ask Pierre real nice and mail him some film to see how much uv it's actually blocking. But I'll probably need to try either Chromaline Accuink or resign myself to less pretty dots and set up a second channel to print through.

[Dottonedan]

thanks Dan! that sort of advice is quite useful.

...SIMULATED PROCESS or Spot color with halftone blending...

is there are place where these are considered totally different animals, or does the one pretty much blend into the other? Where does spot with halftone blending stop and "sim process" begin?

To me, they are one and the same.  Someone else may differ with that but it's not process inks. It's the same inks you would use for spot color printing (but maybe thinned out more).  The the art itself is nothing but solid areas and not so solid areas with other colors occasionally dancing together to form another color.

Some people claim that an ALL PHOTO like image with nothing but halftones is a true definition of sim process. If it mostly has solid areas of a single color but diced with halftones here and there, then it's spot color with halftones.....I guess.  To me, they are the same.

[Lizard]

Or an even better option would be to give them a price to print that image on X number of shirts.  How many colors and what technique you use to get to the end result is irrelevant.  Yes that is a process print and this is our price to do that job.