Photoshop CS3 for Screen Printers- P15 pdf

2. Choose Layer>Add Layer Mask>Reveal All to reveal the entire layer or Layer>Add Layer Mask>Hide All to hide the entire layer. To create a layer mask that hides or reveals a selection only: 1. Select the layer to which you want to add the mask in the Layers palette. 2. Make the selection for the mask using a selection tool. 3. Choose Layer>Add Layer Mask and either Reveal Selection or Hide Selection. Only the selection will be hidden or shown, and this selection can be edited independently of the other parts of the image. To work with layer masks that have been created: 1. Select the layer in the Layers palette that contains the mask you wish to edit. Click once on the layer mask thumbnail to make it active. 2. Select an editing or painting tool. 3. Paint with white to subtract from the image, black to add to it, and gray to partially hide the layer. You can switch to using the fore- ground and background colors in the toolbox and revert to the original black and white there too. 4. When complete, you can either apply or discard the mask by holding down the Shift key and clicking once on the mask in the Layers pal - ette. A red X indicates that the mask is discarded. Using layer masks allows you to separate and control specific parts of an image by producing a stencil of a selection. This stencil can be altered but the area around it is protected from change. These selections can then be saved for later use by saving the mask in an alpha channel. This is briefly detailed next. A Little about Alpha Channels You can save a selection as an alpha channel mask. Saving the selection as a mask will allow you to keep your work for later use. Alpha channels are storage areas for data, like selections. When a selection is saved as a mask, this channel is created automatically. 396 Part IV / More Tools You can also save a selection manually. First, open the Channels palette using Window>Channels. With the selection active in the image, choose the Save selection as channel icon at the bottom of the Channels palette. A new channel called Alpha 1 appears, which can be renamed. These alpha channels can be deleted, added, and edited using the painting and editing tools, and opacity and other mask options can be set. Alpha channels can also be converted to spot color channels for spot color separations. Once the mask has been saved as a channel, you can paint with white to erase part of the mask, black to add to the mask, or gray to apply opac - ity to the mask. There is more on alpha channels in the next chapter, “Spot Color Separations.” Summary In this chapter you learned a little about paths and how to draw curves as well as straight lines. To create paths, you used the pen tools. You learned to fill and stroke paths and how to save them for later use. You learned that paths can be useful for tracing around objects that would be harder to deal with using other tools, and that paths can be saved as selections for various other applications and purposes. Vector masks and layer masks were also introduced. These can be used to control what parts of a layer will be hidden or revealed. The masks can have special effects applied or they can be inverted for more effect and usefulness. Paths, layer masks, and vector masks are a quite powerful and complex feature of Photoshop. This chapter introduced only the basics, but with this knowledge you are well on your way to uncover - ing the magnificent power of these tools. Chapter 21 / Pens, Paths, and Masks 397 This page intentionally left blank. Part V Color Separations 399 This page intentionally left blank. Chapter 22 Spot ColorSpot Color Separations Of all of the types of color separations that you can perform in Photoshop, spot color separations are the easiest. You’ll use spot color separations when there are only a few colors in the artwork and those colors are distinct. Spot color artwork usually contains 12 or fewer dis- tinct colors. The fewer the better though, since each color must be chosen and separated manually. Spot color separations where the colors fade into one another or have highlights or shading must be printed with halftones output by a PostScript printer. Tr ue spot color images, those whose colors are few and distinct and do not fade into one another or have highlights, can be printed using an inkjet or laser printer and film or vellum without half- tones. If you print T-shirts using a four- or six-station press to print true spot color, remember that you can print only as many colors as you have stations on the press. Besides allowing you to color separate different types of spot color images, Photoshop also makes it easy to create spot color artwork, thus allowing you more options when creating artwork for clients. Creating your own artwork for clients can be both profitable and rewarding and can help you expand your business by allowing you the ability to offer art services. 401 Building Your Own Design Photoshop makes it easy to create your own design from hand-drawn line art. If you have line art that you’ve drawn or artwork that a client has drawn, you can scan an image as line art at 600 dpi and fill the areas of the image with the color. As detailed in previous chapters, the Paint Bucket can be used to fill any area with color, brushes can be used to add highlights, and the Magic Wand can be used to select areas in the scanned line art quickly for other editing tasks. 6 Caution! You can’t fill a grayscale bitmap image with color using the Paint Bucket without first co nverting it to RGB mode. Use Image>Mo de>Grayscale and Image>Mode>RGB Color to convert modes. You can also use Photoshop to open or scan a client’s colored spot color images and separate them in-house. Finally, you can use clip art and text to create designs. True spot color designs are ideal for shirts for local sports teams, staff, family reunions, school choirs and bands, police and fire depart- ments, and any other group or organization looking for a fast, inexpensive, and effective design stating who they are. Figure 22-1 shows some examples. . Note: These examples are JPG files because they were recently e-mailed to clients and were pulled from our “E-mailed to Clients” folder. We send files as JPEGs for several reasons, including but not limited to, the image’s smaller file size. They also prevent clients from editing our work or taking o ur art - work to another screen printer for easy color separation and editing. 402 Part V / Color Separations ] Tip: Practice creating spot color designs in Photoshop; my clients are always amazed when I import some clip art, add so me text, and say “Do you like this?” They almost always do . Prepare Photoshop Before performing any kind of color separations, make sure your monitor, printers, and scanners are calibrated, along with any other equipment that offers calibration options. Also, check the Edit>Color Settings dia - log box to verify that the settings there are appropriate for the ink, mesh, dot gain, color working space, and other options. These settings were covered in Chapter 5. Figure 22-2 shows the settings that I configured regarding my shop, ink, and equipment; yours might be different. If in doubt, return to Chapter 5 and work through the projects. Chapter 22 / Spot Color Separations 403 Figure 22-1: True spot color designs . Note: Depending on your system, you might configure your color settings to include an Apple RGB working space, a specific ink brand, specific settings for manual and automatic presses, and dot gain of 35 percent for CMYK and 30 percent for spot color. Prepare the Image You’ll get images in many forms, some of which were discussed in Chap - ters 13, 14, and 15. Images that you’ll get from clients can be from digital cameras, CDs, DVDs, via e-mail, or they can be originals that need to be scanned. The following offers a brief compendium of the information cov - ered in those chapters but is by no means a complete account: 404 Part V / Color Separations Figure 22-2: The Color Settings dialog box n If you have to scan a colored, spot color image, scan it at 225 to 250 dpi or greater. n If scanning black and white line art, scan at 600 dpi. n Scan the image at 100 percent, unless you need it to be larger than the image given to you, in which case you should upsample it on the scanner by choosing 150 percent or so. n Turn off anti-aliasing if the file size is too large. n Always scan in RGB mode. n If prompted about an Embedded Profile Mismatch when opening a file, choose Convert Document’s Color to the Working Space and click OK. n If the file is an older CorelDRAW or Adobe Illustrator file, export it as 225 dpi with anti-aliasing turned off. With the image now showing on the screen, save the image. If this were a photograph, you’d most likely need to perform some additional adjust- ments. With spot colors though, there isn’t much to do. You can delete areas of the image if they aren’t needed using the Clone Stamp tool to paint over the unwanted part with the color of the background, or you can erase backgrounds that you don’t want using the Magic Eraser. You can also select areas to perform edits on using the Magic Wand. Figure 22-3 shows two images. The image at the bottom is from a client who wants this design printed on a light blue T-shirt. The client added the background in light blue so I’d know that’s the color shirt he wants. The background isn’t needed in the actual print and needs to be removed or changed to white so that it won’t print when you create the vellum for the screen. Clicking once on the background with the Magic Eraser tool removes the background. (Now remember, the colors a client sees on his computer monitor probably aren’t what you’ll see on yours. I’d take special precautions when ordering his shirt. In fact, I’d ask him to come by the shop to hand pick the color from the catalog himself.) Chapter 22 / Spot Color Separations 405 [...]... this chapter you learned how to perform color separations on spot color artwork using Photoshop CS3 You learned first that creating your own spot color design in Photoshop is user friendly, allowing you to scan artwork or create your own from clip art and text You can also color separate client artwork that comes to you via e-mail or CD With the image in hand, preparing Photoshop is next Calibrated equipment... Settings dialog box, or use the plug-in from your ink manufacturer that has the ink settings and other information preconfigured and select what they advise Set dot gain to 35 percent for CMYK and 30 percent for spot colors Verify that you are in Apple RGB working space For the separation options, choose GCR for the separation type and set the black ink limit to 85 percent, the total ink limit to 250 percent,... for the channel.) 9 As shown in Figure 22-8, select Spot Color and change the solidity to 100 percent (Do not press OK just yet!) Note: Solidity values can be between 0 and 100 percent This option lets you simulate on your computer monitor how solid the printed color will be Zero percent is used for transparent inks, while 100 percent is used for more solid inks These settings only affect the on -screen. .. Ctrl+D) Notice that the spot color is black by default, and the foreground color in the toolbox is black as well This is because we did not perform the same series of steps as we did earlier (notably, holding down the Ctrl key or the Cmd key when double-clicking on the channel) Had we performed these steps when working with the red channel, the foreground color would have been black, not red 20 Double-click... change the foreground color to white Brush over the shadows of the unwanted puzzle pieces You can use this same technique to complete or darken a puzzle piece as well Change the foreground color to black and use the Brush to fill in missing parts of any piece 22 After the spot color channels have been created for the five colors in the image, deselect everything in the Channels palette except for the... separating Performing Spot Color Separations There are several ways to color separate a two- or three-color spot color image like the ones shown earlier in Figure 22-1 However, most images aren’t just two or three colors, and recreating the image or performing color separations by hiding colors or using other tricks is not very efficient! There is a specific way to perform spot color separations in Photoshop. .. color separations in Photoshop that will work for all spot color images; this is the task at hand In Project 22-1, we work with a simple, two-color separation and learn the basics This process can be used to perform spot color separations on images with more colors simply by repeating the steps listed here Project 22-1: Performing a Spot Color Separation To perform a basic, two-color spot separation, follow... has taken a picture of a plate she painted that hangs on her wall She’s going to use the fish on the plate as a basis for a logo that she wants you to create for her new tropical fish shop She gives you the picture on a disk and asks you to create the logo for her Figure 23-1 shows the before shot (on the left) and what we do in this section to clean it up (on the right) Figure 23-1: Cleaning up the image... won’t be able to use the print process outlined above You will need to print the separations to a PostScript printer, and you’ll need to tell Photoshop which halftone frequency and angle you need You will also need to configure a dot shape and other information for the color channels that you’re printing This is much more complex than simply printing output to an inkjet printer and is detailed in Part... (Don’t forget to save the selection as a channel.) 18 Notice that after you view the channel, there are shadows of the red puzzle pieces in the channel Select the Brush tool in the toolbox and change the foreground color to white Brush over the shadows of the unwanted puzzle pieces See Figure 22-10 Figure 22-10: Removing unwanted color 19 You might also see that the black can be blacker Configure the foreground . color designs in Photoshop; my clients are always amazed when I import some clip art, add so me text, and say “Do you like this?” They almost always do . Prepare Photoshop Before performing any kind. brand, specific settings for manual and automatic presses, and dot gain of 35 percent for CMYK and 30 percent for spot color. Prepare the Image You’ll get images in many forms, some of which were. image or performing color separations by hiding colors or using other tricks is not very effi - cient! There is a specific way to perform spot color separations in Photoshop that will work for all