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I am looking for a seminar or a training consultant for our in-house art staff.
We currently use SPVR in Photoshop and print from Illustrator. We are looking for training on more complex seps and advanced technical training.
We are not looking for the basics - we are an award winning printer - we are looking to make the most of our illustrations - what can we do when we build the art to get better results? What can we do to decrease our limitations.
be more specific.
complex separation: how much (or how far) is your knowledge right now with color separation?
advanced technical training: which part, illustration? artwork? design? equipment?
award-winning printer? you might already know everything there is to know.
normally, the machine/printer providers like Agfa, Xerox, Canon have specialists that can be contacted for specific training. check what machine brand you have right now and call them and ask if they have specialists.
agfa specialist can teach you with color separation (especially if you have their imagesetter)
xerox color specialists seem to have good training method with colors and their machines.
Last edited by frankiko; November 3rd, 2008 at 11:23 PM.
Our staff has lots of design experience - but there is always more to know. We work with an Epson printer and have been getting support on output through Accurip.
Here's what we're looking for - we want to do the best job possible pulling off full color illustrations on darks. What we are currently doing is a sim process and I would like to find a seminar or trainer that could work with my staff to get them more expertise. I don't know if we need to rethink how we do illustrations from the onset or it we need to learn more techniques for building the final seps after teh illustration process.
It sounds like we're in the same situation. I've been using VueRite/SPVR software for my simulated process jobs, but I'm trying to learn to do them "by hand" in Photoshop. I'm just not happy with VueRite's inconsistant results and it seems like the colors are simply not strong enough.
I've been able to separate full color illustrations using the Calculations and Color Range tools, but these don't seem to work well on illustrations w/ a lot of tonal colors and smooth blends.
If anybody knows of any resources for this training, I'd love to know too!
I'm not crazy about the look of Process. I have seen tees that take sim process and INdex much further than we do. It's not necessarily the number of colors that I find lacking - it's that transitions and brightness.
Yeah, I'm talking about printing on dark garments. Simulated and Index are the only ways I know of to screenprint a full range of color on darks.
What do you mean by "true process"?
This is a great subject, glad you posted it, we send out for really complex seps, and of course are still limited to the amount of screens (14) that our largest press holds, These seps always come back as Photoshop files with the seps being done in Channels.
We have been trying to do as many as possible in-house so that we can control the process and make changes on the fly. Over the years I have know artists who excelled at it - but I have yet to find a resource for training my current staff.
I've been looking for a good resource for this kind of training for a few years myself. The closest I have got was my last job, they licensed art from Reebok. I got a trip out there to work with their production manager. He told me he has two guys who do that work for him and there is no place he could send someone to learn that part of the craft.
They used halftoned underlays and had 2 flashes in their print orders sometimes, very technical work. It's very frustrating knowing that there's a whole next level to this work but not having any convienient place to get the knowledge.
At my last position we had a "guru" who did amazing index seps right out of Photoshop. He learned on his own as well - I would like to find a Guru to hire as a consultant for a couple of weeks.
I do freelance work for several local screenprinters. One of the shops I work for has several plugin titles that automate the simulated process separations. However we prefer to do it ourselves by hand. First we design. Then we separate. The first part where we Isolate the colors using the color range selection tool and then use levels to make the color more vivid is the same. The process from here is different at the different shops I work at. This particular shop makes a seperate layer for each color then converts to grayscale and saves a seperate file for each color sep. then we send to the printer one at a time this gives us maximum control in that all the editing tools and filters are available for layers but not for channels. The downside is that it's very time consuming. Most shops I have designed at we make a new channel for every color then send to printer. all the channels then print giving us our seps. We also coordinate with the printer. Specifieing mesh counts and print order. It's not really an exact science. Each file presents a different set of chanlenges. I have been exposed to many different methods. However I have yet to find the end all cure all method that simplifies the process but still gives you dazling results in every application.
Sorry for not getting these up sooner - here is an example - I wish we could have gotten better detail on the nails - the actual shirt is not this detailed.
__________________
I was born in Las Vegas and all I got was this lousy T-shirt!
Last edited by Artsifrtsy; November 19th, 2008 at 10:15 AM.
Reason: Trying to upload images
Looking for Separation training 
![](http://s156.photobucket.com/albums/t29/Artsifrtsy/?action=view¤t=APTATNC.png" target="_blank"><img src="http://i156.photobucket.com/albums/t29/Artsifrtsy/APTATNC.png" border="0" alt="Three Nails"></a>)
