Curiosity

[AdvancedArtist]

My question is why do you have to seem so hostile about this topic and constantly call out ignorance which in my opinion disrespects a lot of people on this site that are professional photoshop seperators who know how to use their software and understand separating for screen printing just as well if not better than you do. There is folks here that have stepped and also printed award winning shirts and I have one of them award winning shirts hanging in my office, no push button sep software or plugin could come close to creating the seps that the artist did for that shirt. The difference between the software no matter the software and a human is that the human understands how ink works on shirts, understands how ink works on bases, understands how ink works through different mesh counts and understands how inks play together in different print orders. Software cannot do that it only knows one thing and thatis how to do what it is told to do on screen.

Not saying your technique cannot do a decent out of the box job, but I would love to see it used in comparison to a human seperator with a non cherry picked graphic.

I would absolutely love to do comparisons and we will be doing some in the very near future. Yes I may seem hostile at times but I am also well aware of the fact that allot of false information is making the rounds even now. And the false information costs small businesses money and clients.

Case in piont..

Guy with a multi-color print takes the art to an Adobe Shop the Adobe Shop says he needs 12 colors and it will cost XXX$ the guy goes down to the street to an AA follower with a small shop using CorelDRAW. AA follower takes the art apart in HSB then tells the client he can do it for X$ with 4 colors. The guy with Corel gets the four figure order and the client. End of story.

If you do not understand color and the guy down the street does he may very well take your clients and money away.. how do I know that. I hear about it all the time now.

[Command-Z]

HSB seps are possible in Photoshop. Here's a tute from Youtube posted by somebody here before:

Manual HSB Color Separation in Adobe Photoshop for Screenprinting

Maybe convoluted at first, but once the basic moves are made into actions, it's a piece of cake.

Art made in Photoshop is best sepped in Photoshop. How are you going to isolate and airbrush an area in a vector program? Plus, yeah... Draw isn't available for Macs and didn't run well in that environment when it was.

This is a great discussion, but it smells to me like a backdoor sales post for your software. 

[AdvancedArtist]

HSB seps are possible in Photoshop. Here's a tute from Youtube posted by somebody here before:

Manual HSB Color Separation in Adobe Photoshop for Screenprinting

Maybe convoluted at first, but once the basic moves are made into actions, it's a piece of cake.

Art made in Photoshop is best sepped in Photoshop. How are you going to isolate and airbrush an area in a vector program? Plus, yeah... Draw isn't available for Macs and didn't run well in that environment when it was.

This is a great discussion, but it smells to me like a backdoor sales post for your software. 

Thanks for the post but honestly I am not selling anything but awareness of HSB and as you said yourself it is a piece of cake. Which is what I have been trying to point out.

Art in PhotoShop is best sepped in PhotoShop? That is an opinion...

Isolate an airbrush in a vector program? I suppose you are referring to CorelDRAW is CorelDRAW just a vector program?

Concerning the MAC are you somehow limited to only being able to work with a MAC?

[Rockers]

The whole process does seem to be easier in Corel by what I have seen in the video, but that might just be due to my limited knowledge of Photoshop which by the way is  a software I dread to use. I`m kind of an Illustrator person but since we have as well a Windows PC now I might get a copy of Corel Draw. By the way I do like the opentshirts soft. Real nice.

[inkman996]

My question is why do you have to seem so hostile about this topic and constantly call out ignorance which in my opinion disrespects a lot of people on this site that are professional photoshop seperators who know how to use their software and understand separating for screen printing just as well if not better than you do. There is folks here that have stepped and also printed award winning shirts and I have one of them award winning shirts hanging in my office, no push button sep software or plugin could come close to creating the seps that the artist did for that shirt. The difference between the software no matter the software and a human is that the human understands how ink works on shirts, understands how ink works on bases, understands how ink works through different mesh counts and understands how inks play together in different print orders. Software cannot do that it only knows one thing and thatis how to do what it is told to do on screen.

Not saying your technique cannot do a decent out of the box job, but I would love to see it used in comparison to a human seperator with a non cherry picked graphic.

I would absolutely love to do comparisons and we will be doing some in the very near future. Yes I may seem hostile at times but I am also well aware of the fact that allot of false information is making the rounds even now. And the false information costs small businesses money and clients.

Case in piont..

Guy with a multi-color print takes the art to an Adobe Shop the Adobe Shop says he needs 12 colors and it will cost XXX$ the guy goes down to the street to an AA follower with a small shop using CorelDRAW. AA follower takes the art apart in HSB then tells the client he can do it for X$ with 4 colors. The guy with Corel gets the four figure order and the client. End of story.

If you do not understand color and the guy down the street does he may very well take your clients and money away.. how do I know that. I hear about it all the time now.

The part where you wrote "Adobe Shop the Adobe Shop says he needs 12 colors" is exactly why a human is better than any program no matter the color space they sep in. Just because Adobe says 12 colors does not mean someone like Dan could whittle it down to something much less because he has the knowledge and understanding to do it.

I truly think your HSB sepping is fascinating obviously there is something to it.

What i cant swallow is that Dan is ignorant or any other big time professional seperation artist, Dan and many others have stayed out of these posts but I bet they know exactly what HSB is and how it works which makes me think as good as HSB is there is probably also draw backs.

[Ryan]

I love this stuff. Its like MAC vs PC all over again. I personally think that however "you" can get from point A to point Z is all that really matters. Iam a corel user and have just about all of AAs stuff. I've dabbled in it but haven't really had any time to seriously put into it. The one thing that I want to see, which I haven't seen yet, is someone put out a shirt with a graphic that has been seperated with corel. The videos look like its a winner for a lot of us hear that are corel based. Personally I would do dome of the simpler stuff in corel but anything really high end I would probably still leave to the professionals as I don't think, like most of us that are running a full shop, have the time to go to press and realize we need to do somehting different. I think its probably a pipe dream to see identical art sepped by Dan and AA and then have someone here actually print it and compare the 2 and see what the results are. That would be intriguing to see possibly 1 design with say 7-8 colors and one that can be done in 3-4 colors. Wish I had the knowledge to chime in with real world facts, but I still find the subject very interesting and everyones thoughts on it.

[Sbrem]

I don't see it as Mac vs. PC really, just Corel vs. Adobe, and not even really a fight; just 2 sets of tools with some slight differences. I've been getting files since the late 80's. I can count on one hand the amount of Corel Draw files I receive. Essentially, it's zero. I much prefer working in the Mac environment, even though I can work on a PC. I learned Freehand and Illustrator in the beginning (I'm leaving out Cricket Draw and Laseroptics) and when I tried to look at Corel Draw (6.0 for Mac) I just didn't like it at all, pretty much the same with Canvas. To me, they were totally unintuitive. Now, the new program Tom has developed for CD is indeed fascinating. I even bought Corel X6, to put it on my Mac (Fusion running XP). It's slower than anything, no time for that. I will eventually load it onto the PC in the office, but taking any time to learn it isn't even on a back burner, maybe next winter. Either way, keep it all coming, education is a good thing. Oh yeah, it does indeed smell like a sales pitch, but it's one I don't mind hearing...

Steve

[Dottonedan]

Despite all of the irrelevant questions and accusations as to being lied to for years or (was it the wrong way to separate), in the end, the questions should be for printers,


"Will my time and my skill/knowledge of using X method be better than another method or better than sending it out? Am I going to best serve my customer, increase sales and win the loyalty of my customer with only using my time and my skill/knowledge of X methods?".


You asked, "why do separators charge "sooo much"?  I first ask, "what is sooo much"?  What is a great end result worth to your customer?  What is the personal attention (to that specific art and customer worth?) Being someone who sells the printed shirt to the customer myself, I do know what it's worth.


Below is only one example of what a Pro does. It was a separation job sent to me. It was assigned to just separate the job. But for being a human with an understanding of this business, I want to provide a great looking print. I know I need to clean this up a bit. If I left this (as is), it doesn't look that great when printed to say the least. So I do what I choose to do to help out the printer and his/her customer. This is a typical scenario as to what a live person does better at handling your separation than does any auto sep program no matter what color isolation method or auto sep brand used.


For now, this is about all I have to say about this.


D

[Command-Z]

Dan makes a good point... are we going to just sep the jobs we get as they come, or are we going to improve the image and design itself?

A true pro will do the latter. When I worked on staff in shops, I would often make suggestions as to how a design can be made better, since many files provided by clients are not exactly designed well. A pro will see things and make little tweaks that may not even get mentioned.

Regarding Photoshop vs Corel Draw... coming from a traditional painting and airbrushing background, masking and airbrushing and brush strokes made by hand are best done in Photoshop, not vectors. Drawing shapes with wireframes and filling them with gradients is not the same as blending pixels like wet paint on canvas. Not even close.

This isn't a Corel vs Adobe argument, or Mac vs PC, it's DIY vs professional. Yes, most people who own cars can change their own air filter... but to rebuild the engine, most people are better off hiring a professional... and paying the money a professional earns by knowing not just how to fix problems, but how to make the car run better.

I think this software is a good thing. It's probably a great tool for many shops to have in their toolbox. But no sep plug-in is ever going to be the end-all, do-everything, one-stop solution. Every job is different. You've made a good contribution to the print world here... but coming in and stating things like "urban legends" and everything has been a lie until you came along is well, Alex Jones-like. Or... maybe it reminds me of someone else. Someone who is closer to this industry. Anyone? 

[AdvancedArtist]

The art side is definitely something that separation techniques cannot do or being able to make adjustments to things that is on the human side before the separation process. Even working in HSB there are different ways to do things. Which is why I really liked the post from Mark which I quoted.. the most addressable color space and in my opinion once you understand it, it is the easiest to make analysis and separation decisions with. Being able to easily pull back brightness and look at hue opens the color up immediately then looking at the degrees of hue or color you are right way in a position to see what needs to be done to proceed with separations. The fact that Screen Printers use black and white ink and have many different colors of ink makes HSB the natural fit for the Industry.

I am really not trying to push plugins I am trying to open this up for the Industry which is why we have the Corel and PhotoShop videos which do not us the plugin. You wont see any other plugin providers showing the techniques for separation or breaking down the science behind the process. But if you are motivated on behalf of the Industry then I believe you want the Industry to understand these things clearly. So that the Industry can make informed decisions from an understanding that comes from real qualified information.

[starchild]

No plans for that at this time but we do have a bun in the oven so to say... www.openscreenprinting.com we just remodeled a shop with an 8 color manual and all the trimmings. On that site we will produce free screen printing videos and cover the entire process from art/design to separating to the printing press. All of which should get started in the next 2 to 3 weeks.

We are planning on comparing many things in the interest of getting every shop up to speed at the highest level possible given the equipment they have. It is possible to do very high end looking prints with just a few colors and it is possible to do amazing prints with more colors.

Lets hope it all comes together effectively on the screen printing training side

Tom I take it this is you and Scott's latest concoction? Scott did say he was hard at work on some vids  and had something special brewing..

[AdvancedArtist]

No plans for that at this time but we do have a bun in the oven so to say... www.openscreenprinting.com we just remodeled a shop with an 8 color manual and all the trimmings. On that site we will produce free screen printing videos and cover the entire process from art/design to separating to the printing press. All of which should get started in the next 2 to 3 weeks.

We are planning on comparing many things in the interest of getting every shop up to speed at the highest level possible given the equipment they have. It is possible to do very high end looking prints with just a few colors and it is possible to do amazing prints with more colors.

Lets hope it all comes together effectively on the screen printing training side

Tom I take it this is you and Scott's latest concoction? Scott did say he was hard at work on some vids  and had something special brewing..

Scott is not in the mix on this one actually working with my partner on this he has a small shop and that is where we will be doing the video. The key here is going beyond screen capture stuff and into real video production. For the longest time it has been here is a screen printing start up kit good luck.. Nothing on the art side of any substance. So we are planning to bring it all together is on place art to print.

[abchung]

The whole process does seem to be easier in Corel by what I have seen in the video, but that might just be due to my limited knowledge of Photoshop which by the way is  a software I dread to use. I`m kind of an Illustrator person but since we have as well a Windows PC now I might get a copy of Corel Draw. By the way I do like the opentshirts soft. Real nice.

Before you go off and spend the money. Have you tried the HSB filter for photoshop. This filter can be downloaded from their website.

This is how you can use it.....
1. Duplicate the design.
2. Then go to the channels and use the HSB filter. Photoshop will give all these funny colours in RGB..... The B is what you want.
Select all and paste it in a new layer.
From here you can follow the instructions from the above youtube.

I find the above youtube method using HSB covers more range than color range.

Goodluck

[AdvancedArtist]

There is definitely a tidal wave of change coming to this Industry.. It will be earth shaking and massive. Artists will find themselves replaced by 3D and automated painting programs. Separators will be a thing of the past as color and technology kicks in.. Just look at where we were 20 years ago and look at where we are now. Like it or not if you are not cutting edge you will suffer extinction.

[ZooCity]

I think the notion of separating in an HSB color space is incredibly valid.

advanced artiste- avoid the hooha and just make the dang plug in for PS too.