Q: Who is responsible to insure the print matches the artwork?
Greetings, I am looking for Tech Info about the best way to cost effectivly maintain a dot pattern on non white shirts.
As a freelance artist, I recently created a 60's style design for a client.
Lime green shirt
Hot pink lettering with gradient Outline.
The printed design still looked good, but the dot pattern had so much gain you could not see them. (the neon pink ink was strait outta the bucket)
1) The Film Clearly showed visible, printable dots (40dpi)
2) the screen was a 150, to print neon pink ink (no under-base white)
The Client discussion wen't something like this:
"Why am i paying you for a design that won't print what you designed..?"
My suggestion was to thin the ink, to maintain the Dots or Burn on a higher mesh screen. That was met with resistance.
My goal was to not place blame, as it was clearly coming down to Artist vs Printer in front of the client!
HELP!
feedback welcome. Especially from A Pro-Printer
Last edited by sadicus; May 16th, 2008 at 06:57 AM.
Why is the printer asking you the artist why he cant re-create the design? I am just learning screen printing but if the film shows clearly printable dots its not your problem. The first thing that comes to mind is a higher mesh count but as I said I am new to screens.
It is the printer's responsibility to print the art to spec, using whatever methods necessary. If he can't print it, he should be giving it back and they should be asking you for different art.
A skilled printer will be able to print just about anything. This doesn't sound that hard, so I think what you have on your hands is an inexperienced printer.
As an artist, how can you be in control of what the printer does? There's no reason to blame you.
If you could show us a sample of the art and the finished tees, some of the printers here might be able to come up with a solution for the next time.
To an extent all art created for printing has to be in line with the specs the printer allows. We have all been down this road in the creation of a graphic. Point being if you created it to his specs and he made an acceptable positive you should be in the clear. The fact that he questions your abvility in front of the customer shows his inexperience.
Q: Who is responsible to insure the print matches the artwork?
Greetings, I am looking for Tech Info about the best way to cost effectivly maintain a dot pattern on non white shirts.
As a freelance artist, I recently created a 60's style design for a client.
Lime green shirt
Hot pink lettering with gradient Outline.
Quote:
The printed design still looked good, but the dot pattern had so much gain you could not see them. (the neon pink ink was strait outta the bucket)
1) The Film Clearly showed visible, printable dots (40dpi)
2) the screen was a 150, to print neon pink ink (no under-base white)
The Client discussion wen't something like this:
"Why am i paying you for a design that won't print what you designed..?"
My suggestion was to thin the ink, to maintain the Dots or Burn on a higher mesh screen. That was met with resistance.
My goal was to not place blame, as it was clearly coming down to Artist vs Printer in front of the client!
HELP!
feedback welcome. Especially from A Pro-Printer
Hi there, the fact that the film clearly showed visible dots, doesn't mean they are going to be properly printed. You need to compensate for dot gain before outputting your positives. In order to do this in photoshop, go to curves and adjust your gradient, in the highlights, midtones and shadows areas and make sure when outputting the films you get hard opaque clean dots to burn your screens. Be aware that printing in a manual press will need more compensation than printing in an automatic press.
Hope this can help!
Challenger
Press gain is the problem and the responsibility of the printer.
Press gain varies from printer to printer and from press to press. One shop i worked at had a gravure press which had 40% press gain and an web offset press which had 10% gain. For man jobs, either press could be used.
The artists always draw the artwork at 100% color. When it was time to go to press, the film would be output using the settings to calibrate the film for whichever press was chosen.
fred
__________________
A day late, a dollar short, so it goes.
The client is wanting EVERYTHING Vector. (output from CorelX3)
Sometimes i convert a Vector to Bitmap (300 dpi @ 100% SIZE)
12" X 14" 300 DPI
In the past, i used Corel to output all my seps, even bitmaps. Over the years i have found Photoshop to take way longer to print seps.
Hi, Sadicus it is hard without seeing, but you are the artist, is the art calling for 100% vector? Yes, you can convert a vector to bitmap and edit the bitmap in photopaint, save it and take it back to corel for film output, that is one way to do it, you can also compensate for dot gain in corel, however graphic programs are created with specific functions, and we use them according to what they intended to do best, that is why is very important to focus on each specific area when creating designs for screenprinting, example: if there are a lot of continuos tones like in a photo or a landscape, with spot color areas and texts, best thing to do the continuos tone areas in Photoshop, and also create the color separation there, tweek the colors and make spot channels, save it and then export them to corel as a dcs2 file, once in corel you then create the regular spot colors and texts as vectors, make your dot gain compensation and output your films from corel.
General speaking most of the clients are not graphic oriented, they are not screenprinting oriented either, so in your case all he wants to see, is your artwork printed and popping out from that green shirt.
So in regard to your main question Who is respon......, I do think and this is only my personal opinion, all are involved the client, yourself and the printer, in screenprinting there is no such thing of reproducing or matching an artwork at a 100%. We all learned a lesson here, and we don't want to fall again, so we need to learn about screenprinting in deep, what are the needs when creating and reproducing artwork, what we can do and what we can't do, who is going to print the job to work toguether with him, and to let the client know what he really is going to get.
Good luck
Challenger
Why is EVERYHTING not Created Vector? 
Re: Why is EVERYHTING not Created Vector? 
Re: Why is EVERYHTING not Created Vector? 
