The biggest thing beginner printers overlook is their Rip, Film quality and the actual printing ability.
I have seen perfect seps pinted like crap by niovice printers, and horrendous seps look like works of art by veteran printers.
The spot color simulated sep can very easily be done in straight photoshop, without the aid of expensive plugins and programs, it just takes practice….practice…practice, and a comfort level that will only come with experience.
I have a bunch of so-so tutorial videos on my site, if you are looking for walk throughs…with the channel mixer.
Any issues such as accuracy of registration, inconsistency and lack of colour vibrancy…are strictly a printing side problem. As long as your 100% areas are 100% black on your sep film on screen it will reproduce as such.
Channel Mixer and Gradient Map work great, nearly always.
Color Range is spotty and doesn’t produce good results if you have mixing of colors….works great for art that has minimal mixing though…Blues, Tans, purples, oranges and Greens blending in sunsets, flames and skin will put an end to the color range fast.
Index Seps can produce a good result, but it is very dated, and limited by gradients as well.
CMYK is expensive and very easy to screw up….you need to be very very good to do it right and have it bright. Plus you will usually need a White & grey spot anyways…and your print will look purpley on occasion.
Sep’ing is an art form in itself, and there are tons of ways to do it.
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