[mehugh]

Hello all. I have been printing for almost 4 years now and I have finally run into a problem. I use Waterbased inks in a home based unit/setup. I just got an order for a permanent print job for a fanclub. I have never printed halftones before and I am having a problem with seperating the colors to set up the halftones for creating my screens. I have watched the tutorials on Youtube and was referred to the program AccuRIP as I use Photoshop cs5. I still dont understand the process as I have always had seperate colors and never had a print that used gradients and I cant seem to get the AccuRIP program to work as I run win7.

My most recent prints are just 4 seperate colors/screens. It has no blending or gradients.

My newest project/order is midnight blue/white/gray-silver mist gradient blend. I have gone into the channels section and tried to print them and tried to create new layers but nothing is working. I even went through the whole process of (as posted in the youtube videos) manually doing color range and saving selection as new channel and it just isnt working for me for some reason. Is there a free or cheap program besides AccuRIP that could help me or is there someone that can walk me through this as I need to get this done asap as orders are piling up.

Any help is much appreciated. Thank You in advance.

PS- I use the YUDU screens as its too far away to go to the nearest screensupplier and they are alot easier to store than the traditional bulky aluminum screens. I use the 220 mesh as well as Diazo Emulsion but my problem seems to be in the printing not in transferring to the screen for template/stencil.

 

[Celtic]

Hi, ok, I use AccuRip and it's really good, but yeah, it's strictly for your halftones, not for color sepping. Have you done your setup within AccuRip?
Also, you need to be sure that your art is ready to be printed.
Can you post a pic or more of a description of exactly what's happening?

I also use UltraSeps, which is a color sepping program and a lot more, including it will also do your halftone setup for you. The version before UltraSeps is called QuikSeps and Steve (the developer) still sells that on his site too. It's excellent also.
Remember if your artwork isn't ready for print that it's not going to go to film, screen and shirt well either. All steps have to work.

 

[mehugh]

Sorry it took so long to get back to you. I am in the middle of remodeling my house among other things. Heres the Image. Im not able to get AccuRIP to work in my photoshop for some reason and I have never used Corel before but I am thinking on switching as I have heard alot of good things about it over photoshop.
As you can see in the picture I need the mist effect and I am having problems with it. I have made several screens but they just dont come out right. Since I use liquid emulsion it only costs me like 10 cents to make a screen but I have already tried to redo the screens 7-8 times with the same result so any help is greatly appreciated to work out these bugs as this is a big account for me since this band has a movie hitting the big screens later this year.

 

[radialhawk]

Accurip has nothing to do with photoshop. You separate the art in photoshop, then you print your channels or layers TO your printer through Accurip. You'll need to specify beforehand in Accurip, your lpi, screen angle and resolution. If you don't know how to change the settings, just use their defaults(probably set for 45lpi/22.5 angle i'm guessing). Also, you'll find burning halftones to be a whole new ball game compared to just spot colors. If your films aren't dark enough, your exposure unit not great (ie: bank of flouresent bulbs, no vacuum), wrong emulsion (personally I prefer a dual cure), etc, etc.... your going to be pulling your hair out trying to burn a decent screen.