Great Separations Video

[Dottonedan]

I've heard others say good things about Camtasia. When I bought my SnapsPro, it was about 60-80.00 and worked on Macs. I do think that is a part of my YouTube issues.

I am going to get Camtasia soon. It only runs on PC last I read.

[Dottonedan]

Speaking of how people do things differently, the most unique way the I found fir anyone separating out of Photoshop was this way.

Creating all of the art in CMYK or RGB  layers,
Then knocking them out of each other,
Then stripping the color out (desaturate) so that you only have black white art (on each layer).
Then print.

I've never tried it. I know it's not the best way, but it is (a way).  They don't go into channels but to me, channels are (the way).

[screenxpress]

I've heard others say good things about Camtasia. When I bought my SnapsPro, it was about 60-80.00 and worked on Macs. I do think that is a part of my YouTube issues.

I am going to get Camtasia soon. It only runs on PC last I read.

Dan, right on that link he posted is 1 for PC and 1 for Mac.  Check it out.

[Artelf2xs]

Personally, I think it is silly to create separations on solid graphics and type in a bitmap editor. even at the highest dpi output, the file will not be as exacting butt register as post script. especially depending on you use of anti aliasing. Then throw in a 45- 55 dpi pattern for tints, or tones & you render  resolution over 110 usless.......

Photoshop is best for photographs or halftones.
this is the quote under the vid....."I keep hearing how screen printers can't print without a vector image. I show you how to separate a flattened jpeg into a layered, print ready PSD file. Fun fun!"

I have issues with both those statements.. first off the guy believes everything he hears. " Can't print without vector" Al-rightly then.

Print ready? Not!!! print ready means I send it to print..... not turn on a layer, send to print, turn off, turn on another send to print, repeat......... repeat.... repeat....

Like Dan said, I'm sure this will work fine for some... Just like printing process on wood frames and a hand press.

[Sbrem]

We still do our rasters in PS, separate into channels, then import to Illustrator for addition of text and output. I know some have said that since computers now have greater power you can do the whole thing in PS, but we still find we have cleaner edges with the vector text without having to have a very high res PS image. At 55 line, 110 ppi is all that's really necessary for rasters, at least that's what I read then proved by trying it out.

Steve

[Dottonedan]

We still do our rasters in PS, separate into channels, then import to Illustrator for addition of text and output. I know some have said that since computers now have greater power you can do the whole thing in PS, but we still find we have cleaner edges with the vector text without having to have a very high res PS image. At 55 line, 110 ppi is all that's really necessary for rasters, at least that's what I read then proved by trying it out.

Steve

You are correct. That is what Adobe will tell you about resolution and output. 2x or 2.5 time the halftone being used.  That is for straight output of what they consider (a photo, a scan of a painting or something digitally rendered). As expected, they are not addressing the screen print industry's full use of Adobe photoshop. They don't even acknowledge that you can print separations from it. They consider it more of a work program to design and paint in and not a pe press output program.

Here is where the difference in file Rez comes in for screen print separators. Adobe never intended for anyone to print films from it...and never intended for anyone to print with type in it (that is, for mass production print quality). The fact that you can type in it, was designed only for Internet use and very short run digital printing and not film or paper (mass production). Now the industry had evolved to make digital mass production more cost efficient but you still don't need high resolutions for digital printing like you do for off set.

Now to my point of why I use 300 ppi files 100% of the time. Again, Adobe never imagined people would manually break down a color photo into 14, 8 or 6 spot colors. I need to start my seps out very high...so I can pull out all of the little detail. If I had art that was 110 Rez and tried to separate that, it would lose a noticeable amount of the image quality detail, especially with textures.

If I sep a small area of 1/16" with detail at 300ppi-- and print out at 55lpi and I also sep that same art of 1/16" area detail at 100ppi - and print out at 55lppi you will see a difference in quality between the two.

It's similar to what people say, "Crap in, Crap out". We would not normally prefer to separate a 72ppi jpg file or even a 72ppi Photoshop file (although I have been asked to many times).  How much difference is 110 Rez from 72?  (38 ppi).
On the other hand, I have experienced one customer that printed everything with 1200 ppi files. I talked him down to 300 and he's been doing fine and has sped things up a bit.

As a result of using 300ppi files, I've had no problems with crisp clean type (as far as anyone can see on the printed image).  The pixel edges of round type and thin, small type are almost 3 times smaller than you see it on type that is from a 110 rez file used for 55lpi halftone printing. When you go to print, any soft fuzzy edges of type (or color pulls away from type) in a 300ppi file are lost when you output to film at 55lpi. THe 55lpi won't/can't hold that small detail and is (almost as if you have printed it out in vector).

When you do see it in the digital file on screen and see it in the films, you are able to see the (minute, yet still rough edges) and that makes people think "Oh well thats not crisp and clean thus proving that you can't use type out of Photoshop". No, it's not 100% crisp and clean. But it's no more rougher... then the printed result looks (after you've put it through emulsion, Screen mesh squeegee pressure, blended softened edges and now garment material).  Anything you see on films or on screen is now hidden (so much so) that it can look like type out of a vector program. True fact. This is why (as a tee shirt designer) who uses photoshop and who also does some pretty demanding separations, it's more efficient (for me) to use one program. It streamlines the process and I feel you get higher end results (in the image separations).

I hope that I've cleared up some ideas of why and when you can print type out of photoshop as well as why it's beneficial to use 300ppi rather than the Adobe suggested 2 or 2.5 times the halftone count.  I think this is valuable enough and a subject often pondered so I will add photo examples of each scenario and make this reply (without the quote) an article for people to read on on the main page later.

[Artelf2xs]

That's my other issue with this.  the statement " since computers now have greater power you can do the whole thing in PS" shows as much ignorance as " Printers can't print with non vector"

I've been doing spot seps in PS since version two on 60-80 megahertz, processors with 50 meg drives and 16 megs of ram.

this guys file is either rgb or cmyk making it three to four times larger then needed. Then add 7-6-10 layers, Plus he is Bitmaping the halftone so to get even the quality of my 600 dpi printer the file needs to be 600 dpi, making "each" of the layers and channels 500 times larger then needed.
It's just a STUPID waist of hard drive, processor and time.

it's like asking you to deliver a bike to the next town over..... road A. is downhill and you can coast at 45 mph/
road B. is uphill over a 10,000 foot pass with potholes and stickers in the road.....
you'll get there late, tired and the product will be jacked up :-P

[Artelf2xs]

Dan,

 I don't know if I ever told you this story.... I was on a bulletin board back in 1990, telling this gentleman named
Thomas Knoll how we where printing multi color spot art out of channels in Version 2.5.
He was shocked and said he did not even know you could do that....
Then in version three they where called Spot channels....

That's no BS!

 For anyone not knowing that name... Just Google it

[Frog]

I remember the ad campaign.

I'm a PC/Mac, and Photoshop 3.0 was my idea.

[Sbrem]

Dan,

 I don't know if I ever told you this story.... I was on a bulletin board back in 1990, telling this gentleman named
Thomas Knoll how we where printing multi color spot art out of channels in Version 2.5.
He was shocked and said he did not even know you could do that....
Then in version three they where called Spot channels....

That's no BS!

 For anyone not knowing that name... Just Google it

Now that is impressive. I see his name every morning it seems... about the resolution thing Dan mentioned, the other day, I cut all of my masks and made all of my channels @600 ppi, then duplicated the file and indexed it at 200 ppi, and brought it into Illy to add text and output. After I tried to do the whole thing at the lower res of course; what the hell was I thinking?

Steve

[Shawn (EIP)]

That's how I do mine from the 1st video but if the image has sawtoothed edges I'll trace it in Illy or Vector Magic first.

[inkbrigade]

I've heard others say good things about Camtasia. When I bought my SnapsPro, it was about 60-80.00 and worked on Macs. I do think that is a part of my YouTube issues.

I am going to get Camtasia soon. It only runs on PC last I read.

We're mac only at Ink Brigade and it works great on my macbook pro!

[Chadwick]

I know Dave's got some postscript voodoo going on, but I guess I don't get it or something.
Postscript and me haven't seen eye to eye since I was trying to send complex vectors with gradients
to the printers on-board ram and postscript interpreter..it works, but it was slow ( as all hell ) at the time,
so I wound up doing things a little different since this wasn't going so smoothly while I was learning it.

I agree with Dan about 300ppi as he calls it ( it's right, I always say dpi )

I'll do all my layout work in Draw, like, if I paint something in photoshop I'll add text or whatever in Draw.
Lots of bouncing back and forth, but if you export a vector/mixed bag 'final' layout at 600 dpi to a raster editor,
the dust and scratches filters don't suck so much.
Drop the final down to 300 and then do your seps. Text is still crisp as all hell.
And of course, pixel data doesn't lie. it isn't so much an interpretational math display as vector can be at times.
Avoid any aliasing of edges, shirt and ink will do that for you.

.02

[JBLUE]

Is anybody using calculations?

photoshop

[Artelf2xs]

Is anybody using calculations?

Yeah< But not like that! He's using color range to select ( Yuck) calculating the rgb channels agains each other will pull the colors out in a much smother transition.
Just to create his white he... Duplicates the layer, applies a gradient map, calculates it from gray to transparent....
Sheesh .....just drag the rgb channel onto the new channel icon and invert it allready! :-P