Raster to press process

[Gilligan]

[Sbrem]

Piece o' cake. I see 3 shades of brown, black, white, red, and yellow. Set your Magic Wand tool to 8 in the tolerance box. click on something black, then under the Select menu, choose similar, which should choose everything black. If you get some of that dark brown, then reset the Tolerance of the Magic Wand to 4 and try again. Then in your Channels pallet, at the bottom, the second button from the left is "Save selection as Channel". Click it, and you will have a Channel with your selection in negative form. Go to the Image menu and Invert. Now it will look like black on white. Do this for each of the colors, and you will have your individual channels. That's the basic, but I would use just one brown, the lightest, and print a black halftone over the darker brown spots to reduce the amount of colors we need. But that's another tut for another day. Gotta go print some shirts...

Steve

[Gilligan]

That's the basic, but I would use just one brown, the lightest, and print a black halftone over the darker brown spots to reduce the amount of colors we need. But that's another tut for another day. Gotta go print some shirts...

Steve

Thanks Steve... Now I have yet another way of doing this.  Is there a "standard" way, or even a "better" way or is most of this "what works for you" workflow kind of thing.

I'm going play with this method right now.

FYI, I saw that same darkbrown out of light brown/black halftone possibility also.  When there were some communication issues on their end of getting me artwork I suggested that I could do this job as a 4 color to save them some money.  You are right there are 3 shades of brown but I was going to make it just one shade of light brown since they don't really sit on each other and it would save a color or same weird 10% halftone look.

[Frog]

Not exactly answering your general question, but this particular turkey is also a really easy trace with that layer isolated. I traced it in CorelDRAW, and then filled the different component objects with shades of black like your original project needed.

I don't have the time or patience for your cross hairs right now though, lol!


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[Sbrem]

That's the basic, but I would use just one brown, the lightest, and print a black halftone over the darker brown spots to reduce the amount of colors we need. But that's another tut for another day. Gotta go print some shirts...

Steve

Thanks Steve... Now I have yet another way of doing this.  Is there a "standard" way, or even a "better" way or is most of this "what works for you" workflow kind of thing.

I'm going play with this method right now.

FYI, I saw that same darkbrown out of light brown/black halftone possibility also.  When there were some communication issues on their end of getting me artwork I suggested that I could do this job as a 4 color to save them some money.  You are right there are 3 shades of brown but I was going to make it just one shade of light brown since they don't really sit on each other and it would save a color or same weird 10% halftone look.

I left out an important part, that is the coloring of each channel. Select, let's say, the red channel, and double click it. In the ensuing dialog box, choose spot, then click on the chip to bring up the color picker. Click on the Custom Color button, which brings up your PMS pallet. Select 185, a fairly standard red (or any red you want) and click OK. Now that channel is assigned as a spot color, and when you import it into Illustrator to print, that spot color will show up in the Illy color pallet as a spot color. Do this for each channel...

Steve

[Gilligan]

Cool... thanks Andy... yeah, those cross hairs are just dumb... I'll have the wife tackle that... she'll probably just recreate them.


Also... when doing the color one.  What about trapping and filling in the small gaps.

So far I have done a few things which works (sorta) digitally but I don't know how it would translate to press. I expanded everything (1 pixel) but the black.  The only problem is it means I over print the dark brown on top of the light brown. Losing some of the light brown (most notable in the tail).

[Gilligan]

Quick somewhat related question.

What should I do about this... probably not even worry about it.

But this will create a few "half tones" around what should be black.  Should I just ignore it as it will be so small it won't matter?

[Fluid]

That type of design fits vector more so than raster. Recreating in vector will rid you of any pixelation issues as you posted from the eyes. You can fill / color how ever you wish as well as using blends and can easily separate. 

Those yes depending on the size in the final design may cause you issues depending on you final dot size and shape used when printing your seps and ultimately being exaggerated once on press once dot gain is present.

[Frog]

That type of design fits vector more so than raster. Recreating in vector will rid you of any pixelation issues as you posted from the eyes. You can fill / color how ever you wish as well as using blends and can easily separate. 

And is perfect for an almost automatic trace as in my example.

[Fluid]

That type of design fits vector more so than raster. Recreating in vector will rid you of any pixelation issues as you posted from the eyes. You can fill / color how ever you wish as well as using blends and can easily separate. 

And is perfect for an almost automatic trace as in my example.

agree 100%

[Gilligan]

I've never messed with Corel but from my understanding, it's "automatic trace" function is better than AI Live Trace.

We use it with some success for cutting vinyl... but that maybe the largest beef.  Multiple lines making multiple cuts and lots of ungrouping and deleting said duplicates.

[Fluid]

Trace is good and I would tackle that design by manually tracing the turkey outlines with my drawing pens on parchment paper. Scanning that in and tracing to vector.  Quick cleanup with the shape tool and then adding color and using the tool in DRAW to recreate everything else. Total time to redo that design into 100% vector about 20 - 30 min tops.

[Gilligan]

That's a great idea that I never thought of... my artistic skills are so bad that I couldn't even TRACE it well!

But the wife could knock that out!

[Frog]

I had 15 minutes tops including the text. Perhaps the jpg doesn't do it justice, but the turkey trace was a gimme. Not one that you would need to do manually.

As you know, some just work perfectly with standard settings, and some need tweaking. (Some also present a little more leeway than others as well)

[Fluid]

agree again. I didnt click the jpeg yet you are absolutely correct. Sometimes you can get a almost perfect trace from the get go. Just all depends on the design at hand.