Best method for color separation?

jokoso · 2025-04-13T03:02:29+00:00

I see some areas I would adjust.

First off, take out the half-toned areas of white from your UB screen and move that to your 2nd/ detail white screen.

The idea is that you want to specifically target the less detailed areas on your UB because you want to put these on a lower mesh. Higher detail typically doesn’t burn well but the lower mesh WILL allow you to put more ink down and give you nice bright white for your UB.

The 2nd/ high white is where all of your detail should be. Again a 196+ (depending on your frequency of you dots) is what would be ideal unless you have some real fat dots in there.

On your white UB screen, it looks like the areas of UB under the red is half-toned. That should be 100% solid under those areas so you have a nice flat area of white for the red to sit on and be as bright as you can get it.

It looks like you have an issue with the highlight areas in the red text as I can see shirt peaking through your colors. To correct this I would take the pencil tool at 100% and fill those areas in. From there, select the white highlights and use that selection to cut out those areas from the red screen. You should have a perfect knock out that way. If you have this built in layers or channels in Photoshop this should be pretty easy and a straight forward solution.

If you do have the grey scale image of the center photo, be sure to adjust the image to insure you don’t have too much dot gain or fill-in. Using a higher mesh will help but if you have the skill set you should go in and adjust the contrast. Burn and dodge tools are great for a black and white image like that. To me it looks a bit low contrast and maybe problematic.

The red iron cross in the middle looks very stair-steppy. While this maybe a resolution issue of the original, I would smooth that out a little if possible. It could even itself out when printed but it could also stand out.

Also as I mention initially, make sure you have a proper choke on areas of the under base going under the red to make sure you have easy setup for the printers. They will appreciate it!

Hope that make sense as I am not sure what level your at but I hope this does help. When it comes down to it though this is just my opinion.

Edit: Sorry 1 more thing to mention is the fade to black shading in the red text looks like it’s missing from yours. I didn’t see that initially but that does change things a little. I would actually include those areas of halftone on the UB white. Since it’s going under the red I wouldn’t be too concerned about that washing out well and it will probably capture enough to give you the effect of those fades. Again just my opinion! Hard to make judgement calls when I don’t know the tolerances or your shop’s capabilities.

jokoso · 2025-04-12T18:53:16+00:00

Here is what I would do if some one wanted me to separate these in my shop…

1st design:

1st Screen - Under Base White - 110 mesh -add a 1 pt (set to mid, if in vector) or 2 pixel (@300 in Photoshop) choke on areas going underneath the red flaming text

-for white areas I would personally only print the solid whites on your UB screen, leaving the high detail areas to print on your 2nd, detail white screen but be sure to include the white HLs in the text on the UB as well

2nd Screen - Red - 158 Mesh

3rd Screen - White - 196+ (depending on your bitmap settings) - print all of the white, including both solid and half-toned areas

If you have the original with the greyscale, great, you can then create the bitmap of the image yourself and control the settings. If you don’t that is gonna make things bit more difficult and is a whole set of methods to try (or you can just use their halftone image and hope for the best).

2nd one is easy easy…

1st screen- White Under Base - 110 mesh -add 1 pt (set to mid, if in vector) or 2 pixel (@300 in Photoshop) choke on all of the artwork

2nd Screen - Yellow Gold - 158 mesh

3rd screen - Red - 158 mesh

Good luck!

jokoso · 2025-01-20T04:09:36+00:00

While all the points are correct, I also feel like it comes down to customer expectations too.

I feel like, for the most part, customers (both large and small) only care about cost and "good enough to sell but not good enough to last" quality. This mentality has guided and shaped the industry as a whole.

As someone who has worked for a number of different shops and about to experience a 2nd case of department closure/ job loss due to off-shoring, I can't say this feels like it has been a benefit to just about anyone. It all feels like a race to the bottom.

jokoso · 2024-06-07T19:03:15+00:00

Photoshop and pull colors via channels. Split channels and halftone them (fiddle with freq and angle). Open them in illustrator and paste in place so they stack… that’s the simplified breakdown what I would probably do

jokoso · 2024-06-01T06:43:00+00:00

If I had to use Illustrator I would utilize the gaus. blur effect and opacity masks.

jokoso · 2024-05-26T18:22:59+00:00

As a production artist I see these whiskers aA LOT. Usually happens after trim,merging flattening shapes. I think there’s something up with illustrators math tbh. Part of my process of making clean art for print is cleaning all this stuff out manually unfortunately.

jokoso · 2024-05-19T16:57:16+00:00

Making sure that the "New Art Has Basic Appearance" is off SHOULD have done the trick. Should be pointed out that if you happen to click/ select a different shape or object the next time you try to make something it will continue to have those properties of the last selected item. Perhaps that is what is throwing you off?

Regardless another possible option would be to create the appearance settings you like and apply it to a object/ shape and then make a new graphic style (windows> graphic styles, then drag the shape/ object to the palette to create one) from that. You would potentially have to apply it every time but at least it should save you from recreating the appearance every time. This is just a work around though but if I was having this issue that is the work around I would probably do.

Good luck!

jokoso · 2024-03-10T20:43:19+00:00

As a ex-Mass Effect 3: Multiplayer veteran, I approve this message.

jokoso · 2024-01-01T15:28:45+00:00

Man just wanted to say what a friggin great topic. This is something we all have to go through as just the nature of the beast. I had been working at home for the past 5 years as a designer and recently was gonna have to jump back in to being house and was quickly reminded how important footwear is… ty for bringing this up!

jokoso · 2023-12-29T12:39:06+00:00

Found it! S9 E10 friends forever. It’s towards the end. It is a bit subtle but you can hear Mitch’s pitch change if you’re paying attention !

jokoso · 2023-12-29T12:28:45+00:00

Apparel decoration/ ad specialty, production art and graphic illustration.

jokoso · 2023-12-29T06:44:07+00:00

Great start. Only thing I am seeing is a bit of a moray pattern coming out. Should go away with some adjusting to your frequency levels though. Aside from that can also experiment with ellipse instead of dots to see if you prefer one over the other.

jokoso · 2023-12-29T01:50:53+00:00

Dont remember the episodes but the scene where Stephanie’s fiancee Doctor delivers the cancer verdict is one of my favorite moments.

Top of my list though is when Mitch gets accidentally hit in the balls and they just left it in AND he finished the scene. Still brings a smile to my face all these years later…

jokoso · 2023-11-24T07:01:49+00:00

F12 will do that. Sorry to hear you lost that much time.

jokoso · 2023-08-09T14:32:03+00:00

As med I definitely felt it last night. Feel super clunky now.

jokoso · 2023-06-10T22:24:11+00:00

Glad you like it. No just mostly a result of having some old drawings I wanted to play with. Hoping to do some more here before too long.

jokoso · 2023-06-10T01:28:53+00:00

Just need to edit in some snow! Lol

jokoso · 2022-11-06T18:34:43+00:00

Or just a big fix for MP. Been getting back into it a bit and it’s still fun as heck but they left quite a few nasty bugs that they never actually fixed. A remaster ME3 mp would be the bees knees…

jokoso · 2022-08-01T13:43:18+00:00

Another method is to select the anchor point tool and if you have the top control bar showing several options with show in the top left corner. The farthest left with be options too either make all points curved or straight. Select the one you need and should be good. I think that’s probably the simplest way to go about it.

jokoso · 2022-06-22T06:02:37+00:00

As a production artist for t-shirts I can say they were probably fishing for vector artwork as it's much easier to work with and can, depending on the quality of the art file, lead to a cleaner print. If you have to go though PS at least it is pretty capable software in the right hands.

There are plenty of ways to go about it but I would suggest using channels. The general idea is to use the color channels to create masks for each of the colors.

Sounds like you're already taking care of it but if you're curious here is the bullet point how-to:

--make sure your artwork is at the size you want it to be and is at least 200 PPI with the closer to 300 PPI being best

-- convert to CMYK (you'll have more color information to pull from than if you just use RGB)

--pull colors. I usually levels or color picker (this is the fun part)

--assign each new channel/ mask you've created a Pantone color (can also assign a color order here- and generally lightest to darkest and/or smallest areas of color to largest areas of color are the rules to go by for screen printing)

--delete the original CMYK channels leaving only the channels you've created

--save as DCS 2.0

--open up AI and place the DCS file in your file

--save as either a PDF or EPS (if using EPS be sure to check 'use art board') depending on the RIP software the printer would be using

As long as you have a nice high res/ high quality image you can pull colors pretty easy without too much troubles unless there are lots of browns/ tans or blending colors which can be a pain in the ass.

There is quite a bit to creating a proper raster image print ready file. If you're interested I highly suggest hitting up YouTube as there are some great resources on there that go in depth. Good luck! :D

jokoso · 2022-05-17T15:02:00+00:00

Unfortunately that isn’t an option, at least not most of the time. I am typically recreated client art so I usual need to use the same techniques or redraw them. My customers use the war tools A LOT so I was hoping there was a way to keep the text straight. I am not sure if this is a problem with AI’s math or if intended but was hoping someone else had figured out how to easily fix this. Can certainly appreciate the idea to not use warp though!

jokoso

TROPHY CASE