silverstone

I'd be interested to learn some of you guys/gals preferred methods for reducing the colors in an image to the basic one, two , three colors for spot color work. I run into this quite a bit and it can be a challenge on some of the designs.

A scenario for this would be a customer brings you a photograph of a subject ie: car, dog, mountains, skiier etc. and wants a tshirt designed from the photo . Not a process job but a limited number of spot colors.

I often try to challenge myself to using as few spot colors as possible in a design for the most impact. Whats your favorite tools and techniques for achieving this?

Thanks

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Fluid

Trace by hand with parchment paper, scan * trace to vector, add colors in computer.

Scan, play with various filters, posterize and separate.

2 quick ones

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Solmu

In the case of a photo... try convincing them that black and white is very elegant

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prometheus

Are you talking like a Duotone effect?

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silverstone

Hey Robert! naaa I'm talking about taking a full color image and breaking it down to say 3 colors. I guess you would call it a poster effect or something. Lets say you have a full color image of a hot rod car and you aren't going to go for the process look, your going to stylize the car and include flourishes around it and some lettering to be using it for a rock bands tshirt design that has 3 spot colors.

ps I usually use photoshop and color pick the highlights, Shadows, midtones then take those seps into illustrator and vectorize them hence giving me a 3 spot color image to screen ... whats your favorite way of doing it?

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CustomScreen

Wilflex Easy art does a good job or the reduce colours macro for corel draw if its vectoruse.

 

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CoolTech

Quote: Originally Posted by Solmu In the case of a photo... try convincing them that black and white is very elegant

That is a stroke of genius! Excellent!

 

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snarley

Hi Brian,

I use FastFilms , it's a push button separations plug-in for Photoshop. Like PS it's a powerful program with many routines for reducing the amount of colors required.

FF is a suite of programs that will do separations for dark and light shirts using simulated process color, index colors, real process colors and spot colors. It also has routines for special edge effects and the distressed look.

Bill M

 

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CustomScreen

Quote: Originally Posted by snarley Hi Brian, I use FastFilms , it's a push button separations plug-in for Photoshop. Like PS it's a powerful program with many routines for reducing the amount of colors required. FF is a suite of programs that will do separations for dark and light shirts using simulated process color, index colors, real process colors and spot colors. It also has routines for special edge effects and the distressed look. Bill M

You should try Wilflex EasyArt color separation software it's similar to fast films, but cheaper and i think its alot easier to use.

 

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Fluid

Another good one is by photoscreenprint.com . Brent is a top notch artist/separator and has created his own. The training and tutorial section are amazing.
https://www.photoscreenprint.com/

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