I am new to screen printing and have a couple of questions:
1) I have both a Pantone solid uncoated and coated book and in it I formulas for making specific colors. For instance: Pantone 311 U is part Pantone Pro Blue, part green, part trans.wt. where do I buy these inks to match the pantone formula? Where can I buy Pantone Pro. Blue?
2) On a four color process print (CMYK), is it hard to get a solid color as a final product or are the dots comprimising the color going to be visible?
CMYK the inks mix together, printing wet on wet to get the colors. As for mixing pantones check with your ink distributor. We use Greg Markus at Nazdar and but Wilflex inks. For plastisol we use MX or Equalizer system for mixing, For water base and discharge we use the Oasis pigments to mix the colors. There are pros and cons for each.
The colors don't pop off the shirt. If part of my design has a Pantone 485 I wan it that bright red, and CMYK can not do that. Most high end realistic screen printed shirts is simulated process, which uses pantone colors and half tones to get the real look.
1) I have both a Pantone solid uncoated and coated book and in it I formulas for making specific colors. For instance: Pantone 311 U is part Pantone Pro Blue, part green, part trans.wt. where do I buy these inks to match the pantone formula? Where can I buy Pantone Pro. Blue?
Pantone is a color definition system, not any specific brand of ink. Just about anywhere inks are sold, they will have a color matching system which can produce a reasonable match for any pantone color. It is similar to going to home depot and picking out a paint color and having the store mix that color.
Quote:
Originally Posted by stevendoyle
2) On a four color process print (CMYK), is it hard to get a solid color as a final product or are the dots comprimising the color going to be visible?
From an arms length away, the dots of process color will blend to form colors, rather than a grouping of dots.
The difference in spot color and process color is hard to describe in words. The color "silver" is probably the easiest example. Process color can simply not print silver, but rather it will always result in a shade of gray.
The difference between gray and silver is best described as a luster, but words such as richness, shininess or reflective.
Pantone has one book of colors printed with process and other books of spot colors.
For screen printing, jobs are either printed with spot colors or process colors. With spot colors, the number of colors printed is limited by the number of colors available on the press.
fred
__________________
A day late, a dollar short, so it goes.
We use Union inks mixo pantone matching system but all the major ink manufacturers make pantone matching systems.
With spot colors if your customer wants to change the shade of a color you can just clean the screen and drop in a different color. If the job was process you would most likely have to go back to the computer and tweak the file, make all new screens and try again. Plus the colors never seem quite as bright with process and you can have issues printing on darks with a white underbase. Some colors are out of gamut, meaning you just can't really reproduce them with process. It can be challenging. Simulated process with spot colors is my favorite way to reproduce images with many colors.
With spot colors if your customer wants to change the shade of a color you can just clean the screen and drop in a different color. If the job was process you would most likely have to go back to the computer and tweak the file, make all new screens and try again.
To me, spot color and process color are 2 completely different products.
If a job is designed as spot color, then the job should be printed as spot color. Jobs with a finite number of colors can even be converted to simulated process, but the number of colors will be limited.
For jobs designed in full color, process color is the printing method of choice. Union ink has some very rich process color inks.
The repeated remaking of screens is an indication that the press needs to be calibrated. Process color will never work correctly without the film being calibrated to the specific press.
Today i'm working on calibration files, so i have calibration on the brain.
fred
__________________
A day late, a dollar short, so it goes.
I'm not sure why you quoted me. Do you disagree with what I said? And I agree about Union process inks. I've tried others but always come back to Unions prpl tru tone process inks.
I'm not sure why you quoted me. Do you disagree with what I said? And I agree about Union process inks. I've tried others but always come back to Unions prpl tru tone process inks.
Process printing should not be a try and try again adventure.
fred
__________________
A day late, a dollar short, so it goes.
Pantone inks 
