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| Posted on 4/14/08 at 08:43 AM | |
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The billabong design should can be sepped in spot color. You can use "color range" to select color within Photoshop, or use index color, but I would not print this in four color process since simulated process allows you to print on any colored shirt with identical prints across the entire shirt line. Sim Process is nothing more than taking spot colors that exist in continuous tone on your monitor, in this case an airbrush look behind the black Billabong art, and then on output having Photoshop seperate the images that are spot color in your design. If you click on the color foreground square on the tool bar you can determine if the color you are looking at is process or spot depending on what comes up in the color dialogue box. By selecting colors and making them a selection you can save the selection as a channel and color it with Pantone Colors which will help your screen printer mix inks by formula and match well. Once all color in the design is spot the print dialogue box has a menu option on the left for "output". Here you will disable the process plates and click on the spot color plates. You can then define halftone lpi and angle as well as dot shape. 55 lpi at 7.5 degrees, or 22 degrees will help control moire on 305 mesh. The thing is to work with tonal image color in spot so you can seperate to sim process, which is far easier to print than process on different colored shirts and get them to match. Use an opaque ink system, play with the amount of ink you are printing on each plate, less is more in sim process. It's the dot of the shirt showing through the halftones or index that creates the subtle gradations. In the Billabong I would use a stoachaistic dot, (index print). You could play with contrast and brightness, levels, or curves, to reduce or expand the printable area, this may be nice to get more color to overlap to produce secondary and tertiary colors that get created by ink overlaying. Add some halftone base (20%) to opaque inks to get a better dot and some transparency for mixing. Little Kim would be better printed in a tri-tone or quad tone sim process print. Photoshop allows you to select duotone and you can add more colors to it for tritone, quadtone. For this job I would use a composite base of all tonals and choke it by using contrast and brightness, levels, or curves to put down less base than my color plates (less than just combining color plates for the base) by about 10 percent less. Sequence would be base, flash, dark grey, light gray,mid grey, highlight white, flash, detail black in a 65line at 22 degrees, on a 380 mesh/34 micron. The sequence for this job could be any number of ways depending on what matters in the design. Sometimes the highlight white could be last with the black printing wet on to wet with the mid gray and dark grey, just depends on the art and what needs detail. If you are set on printing with direct to screen digital ink jets be aware that only stochaistic continuous tone is used although you could simulate a halftone via Photoshop filtering or bitmapping the colors and then bringing them back into the file to be separated as spot colors. Check out Thomas Trimingham's articles in Screen Printing, some of the best articles on handling art destined for a t-shirt. ____________________ Alan Buffington | ||
  
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