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[Photoshop] - Seperating Colors for Screen Printing
I have some complex 10 to 12 color designs from an artist I work with, but the colors aren't in seperate layers. Does photoshop or Corel have a plugin or such that allows someone to seperate out all the colors into seperate layers for the purposes of screen printing?
If there are not any plugins are there any easy techniques?
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Designer in fashion hungry D.C. www.jonwye.com
you can get industry specific separation progs that work as plugins for Photoshop. U.S. Screen Print and Inkjet Technology sells one called FastFilms.
There are others but not sure of all their names.
a google for color separating software might get you some hits.
Hi Jon
if you email me a low res copy of the art work,
i'll let you know exactly what kind of seps you will need.
i've been doing seps for over 10 years and have all the
high end software needed.
happy to help you out.
take care
Ian
Last edited by Rodney; February 22nd, 2007 at 02:46 PM.
Reason: removed email address
The easiest thing to have done would have been to create the art in a vector based illustration program such as Illustrator, CorelDraw or Freehand.
These programs all support Spot colors--if that is what you really wanted, 12 different spot colors.
Photoshop is a raster image program. In RGB mode you have 3 color channels and in CMYK mode you have 4 color channels. Separations can only be made from CMYK mode files. From a separation point of view with a color image you only have 4 colors--Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black.
Hopefully you are having 4-color process transfers made. If so, no additional software is needed. The separations for the 4 color plates can be made directly from photoshop.
You should hire an experienced separator. With a photoshop file, you can sep into spot colors, but you should know what you are doing.
The art doesn't have to be vector, nor does it have to be cmyk...actually RGB works much better for sep'ing, because of the better contrast.
in regards to using a program or plugin to get your colors sep'd....there really is no cure all, they are reliable starts to spot color sep'ing, but it will need tweaking, once it gets to press....for the best quality print....otherwise your print will look washed out, and dull.
You can recreate then in vector....but that will probably take longer than it would to just sep the original design.
what?? no no no! why dont you transform you RGB into a indexed image and then grab (magic wand tool) and copy the different colors onto new layers of another file? thats what i do to print pictures of womens on shirts.
Channel seperations in photoshop. Unlimited color plates, unlimited detail, accurate on screen preview. Damn difficult though. Use fast films or quick seps or easy art or spot process- they automate the separations process.
The easiest solution for you is unfortunately very expensive and I'm talking about the photoshop plug ins that were mentioned. Even these plug ins are a bit difficult to navigate through to get good results.
The screen printer you take your artwork to should be able to separate the artwork for you and I think it would be your easiest and cheapest solution.
Seperating Colors for Screen Printing 
