Hi Denny,
Looking great! One thing to watch out for, it looks like you're enhancing the hues a bit to help the saturation more, the original is very faded tints of the hue.
One thing that can be done in printing is to actually use lighter tints of the hues mixed with white if they are coming out too strong or saturated in the print... but I think you have enhanced them a good amount.
However... it looks like there might be too much enhancement where some of the green was mixing with the yellow/orange of the shades in the people, especially the hair. So I made a quick setup using your file simulating the color seps as inks in photoshop layers, and just bumping up the base a bit which should happen on press, so that without the black you will still be ok... but the green might gain too much and you dont really want or need any green in the people's skin or hair etc, I think it was just part of the blend in the original image very light.
I've shown how I might go in on the seps if I were you and just mask out the people's skin-tones and hair etc from the green separation so that it just won't even be there on press do you see what I mean?
Otherwise it all looks awesome, great job on picking the hues that were part of the original instead of trying to blend with too many colors you don't need. The orange/white/black will blend and capture the flesh-tones and just the light amounts of it in the hair simulates all the blonde and other highlights... I just think the green is showing up from light shades of the yellow/black and you don't want to enhance that, so if anything just cutting it out looks better more chance to capture the orange-tint tones instead of getting them contaminated with the green.
Thanks for sharing, I think it will turn out great, you seem to have already compensated the underbase and highlight white enough so they don't gain too much, although if you were working in photoshop Channels be careful you might have pulled back the highlight white too much (it appears too bright than it really is most times because of certain problems with the channels ink simulation in photoshop).
It's good in just the highlight bright white areas.. but if there is too much gain in the color hues over the white base and not enough white highlight dots to help soften them back... you'll get a more saturated print -- but compared to the original art it may be too much color... and then without enough highlight white dots there to simulate the tint, only way to adjust on-press is to lighten the inks themselves a bit like I mentioned, but this is also a way to print those tones as long as you dont need the really pure bright areas of the color present.
The separation to greyscale gradients here is part 1 of the process... but the conversion to halftone rip is the next step and should usually be done by the separator, although my contention is that the printers should perform the separations however we are not all at that point yet. In doing separations for a client's art and giving to a printer, you'll want to communicate effectively and work closely with the printer in going from the separation to the rip on films, hopefully giving them halftone files yourself so that they do not mess up the separations with bad halftone rip techniques and settings.
However you also want to understand how much control they have over the print, depending on the inks and how they will capture the halftone gradients on screens... the "quality-control" must be carried all the way through from the art input, to separation choices of inks blending, the way you convert and mix the actual halftones in RIP, and then how that translates at the printer to films, screens, and press... the sequence of the inks on press and the ink characteristics, etc.
You are already on the right track, but try to imagine it like a puzzle, and you want the pieces to fit together nice and snug all working to make the image when its done as the inks on the shirt.... but when it is still greyscale instead of halftones - this is the picture on the front of the box and not the puzzle-pieces. You want to control the puzzle-pieces more as the separator yourself -- or as a printer doing the separations, than just giving the pictures to the printer -- they may make the wrong puzzle pieces so to speak.
Great work and like I said, the only thing really is just don't want any of that green enhanced in the hair/flesh-tones.
Take care!
