Seps out of Photoshop are bit of a mystery to a lot of people. Since I am in the middle of putting together our tutorial videos, as well as beginning a new more involved set, I thought some corresponding posts might be helpful as well.

So here is some basic, basic, basic information on Spot Color Separating with Photoshop.

Basically when needing to sep a piece of art that was created in Photoshop, you need to get that beautiful art into separate colors and into channels. 1 Channel will equal 1 film, meaning 1 color screen on the press…..but its always good to have a channeled sep file and an original layered art file….otherwise edit or changes are jsut about impossible. Ok, well not impossible, but you’ll have to start from scratch.

When you create art in photoshop, its always best to keep layers seperate…type layers…individual background layers…element layers….that way when separating you can isolate the objects better. 200-300 dpi is a good range…and make the art true to size. So just create a piece as you want in photoshop and then sep later in a new multichannel file when it’s done. Just remember the more complex you have the colors merged in 1 layer the tougher it will be to pull those colors out. So if you merge a bunch of elements together it does get hard to “unmerge” them into basic colors.

While some artists may suggest painting right into channels…if you need an edit for a client or just want to use an element in a new piece of art…you will have a much much tougher time.

The industry standard is outputting a DCS 2.0 eps multichannel file though Photoshop, into illustrator, or quark, or Indesign….basically as a placed file.

A separation artist will pull out each color and make a new channel in a new file off of your art…or you can watch some of our videos and learn to sep yourself…just be aware it is an art form there is a learning curve, and you will probably have to retrain the way you think about working process….but fortunately there are many ways to accomplish the task, and it really will give you a new appreciation for the screen printing process.