digital print workshops

Overall these workshops have been quite helpful! The second week introduced me to how Pantone works (I think I mostly understand them now) and reminded me how useful and not as complicated as I had once thought Channels in Photoshop are. All of these should prove helpful at one point or another as an illustrator potentially working for print, but probably quite soon as I think I would like to screen print my project.

notes:

part one: 

part two:

access pantone colours through the colour picker

if the mode of the image is CMYK every colour will be produced with CMYK process colours- not good for spot colours SO:

using channels for spot colours:

make a new spot channel with the colour you would like to work with. the colour doesn't matter too much as when printed it will be a black positive but gives the idea of what the print will look like

colour it in

double click the layer to edit  its properties (the colour)

 

converting CMYK to spot colour

select colour range and make a new spot channel whilst the selection is selected

it looks weird because the spot channel and the CMYK channels are visible and merging together

when selecting the colour range make sure you have selected the CMYK layer again! if it's on a spot colour layer Photoshop can't see the colour 

check positives for specks and clean up!

printing is the same as CMYK separations!

.tiff or .psd

it looks like this because all of the channels are showing

separations preview can assure you of the real result!

make CMYK invisible

untick the printer icon next to the CMYK separations and it's good to go

FOR LARGE FORMAT PRINTS: SPLIT THE CHANNELS IN PHOTOSHOP AND PRINT THE SEPARATE FILES !

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making separations with tints:

for this image there isn't any point splitting it into three spots when two of them are tints of the same colour!

make a new spot channel, select the lighter colour from the CMYK channel (colour range)

go back to the spot channel

choose a light / corresponding grey

edit > fill

and fill the darkest colour with black

go to print in Illustrator, it is pretty similar to before, BUT

change the frequency to 50-60lpi, or for a lo-fi effect go lower

15 degrees is a good angle for one colour

FOR A LARGE FORMAT PRINT: SPLIT CHANNELS IN PHOTOSHOP AND ADD HALF TONES

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overprinting / knocking out:

separations mimic the transparency of screen printing

solidity at 0% mimics transparent inks

solidity at 100% mimics opaque inks (mostly used for fabric printing)

it still looks mixed because the order of channels works in the opposite way to the order of layers

knocking out: is when the separations do not touch! you must be careful when registering these prints. editing a print so that there is some overprinting with a slight tint/ hue change may look better than white/ paper gaps.