Help! Best way to print this!

I get the feeling the client would be expecting those tones in the highlights--personally, I wouldn't take on a project like that if I had no halftone experience. That being said--assuming they're on a white shirt (like the ground in the art) I'd think with six heads, a red, orange, deep blue/purple, light blue, black, and grey would be the colors I'd want to go with. If you have great high mesh screens and a decent exposure setup--and if you're good with your non-micro press--I'd take on the printing, but I were you I'd definitely get it sepped and films run by a pro. It wouldn't look as nice on all those smooth gradients, but an index sep would be more forgiving on press. I'd probably do 230 (or 90T, if you're metric) mesh.

Rita,

while it might be possible to start with an image like the one you have, I probably would not. My suggestion would be to find something simpler to start with and get a feel for printing halftones, both film and actual screenprinting. Pick a couple of designs, one color to start with, and see what you can do. My first halftone image was a picture of the moon I converted to black and white and then printed on a white shirt with one color. It is a good way to get started and seeing what your limitations will be. If you take a picture of the print and post it here, we can give you some feedback to help you get to the next level. If you are willing to put in a few days of testing and figuring thinigs out, with a little bit of help you could print the image you posted at a level that customer would be happy with!

pierre

good advice, Bluemoon !
You too, Tyson.
I have to admit, wheras it's good to move forward, experiment with your own stuff, then you'll feel a lot better and confident with the customer's work.
That being said, as suggested by Tyson, you could have the seps/films done by a pro and go for it. Just depends how confident ya feel concerning it.

You could really simplify it, if the client's OK with that, or try subbing it to an experienced printer.
How many shirts is this for? DTG perhaps?
What colour shirts? You are really short of colours on a 6-head after an underbase and highlight white go down.

Took a while but I found someone to do the separations for me. The design is on white shirts and if it works I am planning on selling them at the car show. I just wanted to try something different, don't think I will have problems printing them (I've been printing for 10 years and have done 6 color designs many times just spot colors though, and I know it's a different type of printing). Just confused about which way to go about it but the person doing the separations says it's simulated process with 6 colors and 280 mesh screens. Trying to find out the differences between CMYK, Simulated and Index printing.

Pierre makes an excellent suggestion--might be a good time to run a design or two for yourself that's halftoned, and double check your workflow before you start wrangling with six screens and registration doing it. If you're buying new static screens, you may want to run a job on each of them before you do this one anyway, with no micros, you can't easily bump them around if one loses a little more tension than another-which usually happens on the first run.

I'd also double check calibration and parallel on your press, make sure you have high quality inks in the proper colors, and sharpen your squeegees.

This is the digital printing job! do you need this print on t-shirt ? or want to print it as sticker ? pretty confused

printingray said:

This is the digital printing job! do you need this print on t-shirt ? or want to print it as sticker ? pretty confused

Click to expand...

The design is on white shirts and if it works I am planning on selling them at the car show.

seems this was answered already (not that it was ever asked though.)

pierre

Rita said:

Took a while but I found someone to do the separations for me. The design is on white shirts and if it works I am planning on selling them at the car show. I just wanted to try something different, don't think I will have problems printing them (I've been printing for 10 years and have done 6 color designs many times just spot colors though, and I know it's a different type of printing). Just confused about which way to go about it but the person doing the separations says it's simulated process with 6 colors and 280 mesh screens. Trying to find out the differences between CMYK, Simulated and Index printing.

Click to expand...

When you print simulated process, you use regular opaque inks. With CMYK, you're using CMYK inks that are transparent and with index printing, you're using regular opaque inks but the dot is different thank with regular halftones and the dots lay down in a different way than with simulated or CMYK halftones.
Post pics after you get them printed.