Tweaking Separations for Better Quality and Faster Production

In my last article, I detailed basic color separations for garment screen printing using Adobe Photoshop, and creating a simple underbase. Our next step is to reduce the color count and bring back lost detail by using the Apply Image feature of Photoshop. We will also learn how to check each separation to make sure it is screen print friendly, so that areas of the image that need to be 100 percent (solid) really are 100 percent.

Reducing the Color Count

As a separator, this is something I deal with every day. Some of my customers can print 10 to 12 colors — nirvana — while others have …