Impressions - April 2023 - 44

t hink .
mak e .
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screen printing production
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Streamlining
Separations
for Screen Printing
Following these three easy steps will save you hours of work
BY THOMAS TRIMINGHAM, CONTRIBUTING WRITER
A good fi rst step is to determine the actual
resolution of the image you're working with to
ensure it will print successfully.
Avoiding problems early on in your color
separations will cascade down into gains at
every step of the screen-printing process.
Fewer screens, for example, will need to
be recreated to accommodate last-minute
changes. There also will be less press downtime
and savings in the ink department, as
less inks will need to be adjusted or remixed.
Lastly, your customers will be much more
satisfied when the final print appears to
match their original design.
To avoid separation headaches, the key
is having a functional strategy in place to
properly prepare your artwork in advance
of pulling out the colors. Keeping this in
mind, a plan that will greatly simplify and
streamline your separations includes the
P.44
use of three simple processes to avoid a
lot of the common headaches that most
companies face: adjusting the artwork for
ideal resolution, correcting edge quality
issues, and combining colors for a nice,
bright printed image that is also printing
friendly. These three " pre-separation " steps
comprise a methodology that can save hours
of time if properly adopted. The goal is to
make your art separation-friendly before
you even start to separate it.
The reason many printing companies
don't adjust artwork before they begin to
separate is they don't want to spend the
time. The thinking is, " Why would I spend
extra time when I can just get right to
the separation steps and get it on screen? "
ImpressionsMagazine.com April 2023
The problem with this approach is that it
fails to address the myriad potential image
issues that may exist prior to starting your
separations. This in turn means you will be
separating the problems in an image at the
same time you are trying to separate the art
elements. Any extra pixels, color pollution
in flat colors, fuzzy outline edges or multiple
hues that shift in different image areas will
not only create additional challenges during
the separation process, they can cause the
final printed product to be unacceptable.
True, customers often do not want to pay
for these kinds of image retouching and
refinement steps outside of separations. It is
a fair question on complex jobs whether to
attempt to charge the customer, or whether
the time savings and higher success rate on
press will make it worthwhile. The irony, as
many printers soon learn, is that by taking
the necessary preparation steps early on-
even in those cases where a client is refusing
to pay for them-the resulting setup and
subsequent printing will often be so much
faster and easier it is more than worth the
effort, regardless of client approval.
As President Abraham Lincoln famously
said, " If I only had an hour to chop down
a tree, I would spend the first 45 minutes
sharpening my axe. " In this same vein, spending
the first portion of your separation time
addressing the integrity of the artwork and
adjusting the resolution, the edges and colors,
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Impressions - April 2023

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