"He who marches out of step hears another drum." ~ Ken Kesey
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.
I was thinking the other day that inkjet printing will replace screen printing...one day. It could be 200 years from now, I think screen printing will become more of a hobby type thing.Never say never...look at how much digital has already replaced in our industry. I grew up using a stat camera.
I think the next real step with Digital vs Traditional is hybrids. Half screen printing half digital machines. Then you can have all the specialty inks still and run underbases for the digital inks. That I believe will be more of a reality before digital replaces screen printing completely.
Quote from: Inkman996 on April 02, 2013, 01:10:36 PMI think the next real step with Digital vs Traditional is hybrids. Half screen printing half digital machines. Then you can have all the specialty inks still and run underbases for the digital inks. That I believe will be more of a reality before digital replaces screen printing completely.Our best sold product is hybrid transfer( digital+screen). sorry for hijacking thread, but I wasn't first :-)Boris
Quote from: Inkman996 on April 02, 2013, 01:10:36 PMI think the next real step with Digital vs Traditional is hybrids. Half screen printing half digital machines. Then you can have all the specialty inks still and run underbases for the digital inks. That I believe will be more of a reality before digital replaces screen printing completely.that is closer than you might think and definitely how things will go imho.
I hope the process of doing seps continues to evolve and I look forward to the future. And some of us might not.
Technology won't replace artist or production people. They just weed out the mediocre ones.Good luck for the future.
Quote I hope the process of doing seps continues to evolve and I look forward to the future. And some of us might not. I know first hand that every separator that does this for a living will not be phased by a sep program that all of a sudden does great seps all by itself. Pro separators get to a point of experience in separations (not by way of focusing on separations) but by way of combining multiples skills and learning seps as a result of a need. If you (one man shop) printers focused on learning separations, your business would slowly fail due to a lack of attention (on your business).An Auto sep program can only take you so far but would be a good choice as it can get you a step further. Anyone who says they have a program that (all you do is push a few buttons and in 3 minutes you have a great separation) is just selling snake oil. The newest one out as well as the one sold 10 years ago, all still require some skill afterwords for editing and all provide (random) results). IN other words, not every auto sep outcome) will be an expectable match to the original art. THen you need to go back and make the auto thing dance a little to get a better result...and add in your own skills/knowledge about printing to get better results.I do not doubt that a specific color model will be better than others. It's just not (THE ONLY) way.A Sep business that is of a ( basic production level) service such as (your average clip art designs, type setting and jpg conversion to vector businesses that one day also added in a service of providing auto seps as an additional service...is going to be effected by (all of his/hr customers now buying a (answer to all) auto sep program. Whatever Co brand that might be one day. They will need to loose that part of the business and go back to focusing on clip art and jpg conversion but even they would be doing the same thing as shown below.A pro separators is always multi skilled. It just comes with the territory. If you look at any separator that is very good, and look at their background. They can do extremely well (in many areas) of demand in our industry. They can decide to quite a full time job that was for only doing separations...and switch into a design position. They are good designers, good illustrators, good printers, good at most everything pertaining to what a shop might need and can often start up their own printing business (if they chose). So it's not like if one day an auto sep program would come into the business that eliminated the need for outsourcing separations and did seps in 2 minutes, that we "pro's would go cry in corner. We would just move into doing something else and occasionally (push a button) for seps. More than likely, we would be the ones pushing that button in a shop.