Screen printing is one of those things that a lot of people take for granted. Admittedly, I took the art form for granted up until I stumbled into this industry. I had no idea what kind of work it took to put artwork onto cotton so you can wear it out and look cool…
So how does the artwork get from your paper or computer screen onto a shirt? Well, the first step in all of this (once the art is completed) is what’s called a separation. All that means is breaking the art into it’s individual colors so it can color films and screens can be created. You may be thinking, ok, so you’re just selecting the colors you see on the screen? How hard can that be?
The first thing that a separator must take into account is the number of colors available to them: e.g. how many heads do you have on your machine?
…you wouldn’t be able to run a 6 color job on a 4 head machine, in other words.
Next comes some magic in photoshop to isolate the colors we want in a way that will print. If you need to fade a color, better make sure you’re able to produce a solid and correct gradient… There’s a lot more to this than I’m willing to share, since unlike relying on software, a hand separation can be tweaked so the art prints on the shirts perfectly.