color separations for silk screen T-Shirt

[pismojim]

I'm trying to prepare a Corel Draw 8 art work for a silk screen T-Shirts. I expect to have three colors: white, light blue and yellow to be printed on a dark blue shirt. The printer would like to have each color printed separately in black. My image includes a bitmap object (Land Cruiser drawing) that has transparent windows that show an underlying surfboard. It might make sense if you saw the image:

I've also put a copy of the corel file (and a zipped version)here:
<

http://realcruiser.com/temp/>

Any suggestions? I've searched, read and experimented for several days without sucess.
Thanks,
Jim

 

[rh14k]

Hi pismojim,

1)Go to -File-
2)Click on -Print-
3)CLick on -Separations- tab
4)Place a check mark in the -Print Separations- box
5)Make sure there are no check marks in boxes under -options-
6)Click on -Prepress- tab
7)Place a check mark in the -Print registration marks- box
8)Click on -Misc- tab
9)Place a check mark in the -fit printer's marks and layout to page- box
10)If you want to see what you are going to print before you print it click on -Print Preview- at bottom left, then scroll through the four pages, with the tabs at bottom
11) NOTE: it would be best to print on photo paper at a higher dpi out-put setting. This will render good quality camera ready art..........also- the quality of the separations will be determined by the quality of artwork you have created(example: vector art will not be pixilated like raster or bitmap artwork)

Please let me know if this post has been helpful to you, by clicking on the appropriate link.



rh14k
H osting
E ducational
L earning for
PC users

 

[pismojim]

Thanks RH, but here the problem. First, White is one of the colors I'm trying to separate. Second, the bitmap images of the flowers and the cruiser show as shades under a couple of tabs.

One problem, and this is tough to explain in writing, is getting the dark blue of the cruiser to drop out over the light blue surfboard. The dark blue &quot;hides&quot; the surfboard but will actually be the &quot;un-inked&quot; background.

I hope that makes more sense, thanks again, I appreciate the reply.

 

[pismojim]

Update: I'm having some success by exporting the image as a jpg file and editing it with PhotoPaint. The export combines everything together and while preserving the layering I want. Then I can replace the each color I want separated with black, while changing the the others and the background to white.

 

[rh14k]

Hey pismojim,

My apologies about the white. I had the rules of paper printing stuck in my head. It's good that you went a different route. Here's something that will help you with future screen print jobs. By the way, I wasn't able to see your art through the link provided. It said it coildn't find the page.

First keep this in mind. The person doing the screen printing will take your camera ready art and will create a film positive-(the opposite of a film negative) of each color. On each film positive there will be a black copied image of which ever color it will be used for.

Try doing this on your next screen print job that has white in it. This make your job and the screen printers job easier:

1)Group like colors together in your art....ex: same shade of yellow....same shade of blue...etc.
2) Place a crop mark diagonally in opposite corners of the page of each other
3)For ea. color you have grouped in the art, copy it and the two crop marks and paste them on another worksheet in the same file you are working in and color it black
4) After all colors are copied to separate worksheets, you can then print every thing to high quality paper(The better the paper, the better the film positive, the better the final screen print). You will then have a color copy and one B/W copy, w/ crop marks, for each color in the art piece.

This is how the screen printer uses a film positive. While in a darkroom, a light sensitive emulsion is spread onto each silk screen-(one screen for ea. color) then dried. After the emulsion is dry, the film positve is placed on top of the dried emulsion on the screen. Then it is exposed to a light source. Every part of the film positive that has the black copied image, of which ever color, it blocks the light from exposing the emulsion under it. When the emulsion is exposed to light it is set to the screen. Then the screen is washed with a chemical wash and the emulsion that was not exposed to light is washed off the screen. Every area of the screen where the emulsion was washed off, is an area where the ink can be sqeeged through the screen
onto the garment.



rh14k
H osting
E ducational
L earning for
PC users

 

[Brushman]

Tricky one this, one thing I would be aware of is, if you have tints separating to an inkjet may not produce the dot pattern your printer wants, usually the linescreen required is 40 - 80 lpi depending on job. As I understand it only a postscript printer (not inkjet) or image setter can do this. I produce laser film here straight from a laser printer and with a black enhancing fluid the blacks are very black, this is for litho though, if you have a postscript laser printer this may be a good cheap alternative to image setter.
Regards
Alan

 

[pismojim]

Another Update: Thanks for the help, your responses and this forum have given me lots of ideas. I think I've got it now. As stated above, the trick was to export the file so the &quot;layering&quot; was combined. Then I could manually use the replace color tool in PhotoPaint. In turn, I could replace each color with black, whiteing out the rest. This gave me my three &quot;film positives&quot; for each of the three colors.

I think it was the bitmap images that were giving me fits in Draw.

BTW, the Corel Draw file is located at:

http://realcruiser.com/temp/

(too bad I couldn't edit my first post)
I've also included the three separated color files in

http://realcruiser.com/temp/st23.zip

Off to the printer this week, fingers crossed.

Thanks again,
Jim

 

[chambo33]

The solution to your problem was MUCH easier and much LESS time consuming than what you ended up doing.
Next time...
Change the color of white to a Pantone WHITE. That way, the computer reads it as a spot color..rather than just &quot;no color&quot;.
From there, you may proceed with simply printing the job as separations.
I am a screenprinting graphics artists, so I do this everyday.
Check out the forum at

http://www.usscreen.com

for more info.