27 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Screen Printers Bible, January 18, 2006
This review is from: PhotoShop 7.0 Screen Printing (Wordware Applications Library) (Paperback)
***WARNING I AM NOT A SCREEN PRINTER NOR DO I PLAY ONE ON TV***
First off Photoshop 7.0 for Screen Printers is written for Microsoft Windows so you Mac users will have to translate, second it expects you to already have a RIP and a printer that prints on film to do the final output. Although it does go into output media such as Vellums (A semi-transparent media that is easy to print on like paper but shrinks like the dickens.) and Specialty Films or transparencies (A true transparent media that has been reformulated for inkjet printers and such.) the book does not really give a great deal of information about their use. That is the problem here, there really is so many brands and so many ways to tackle the job that you can easily get lost in the product information available and allot of the knowledge comes from knowing your printer and your capabilities and your press.
PHOTOSHOP FOR BEGINNERS
The book is laid out more along the lines of a typical Photoshop teaching manual, which is both good and bad. You begin with your basics in the Part 1: The Photoshop Interface, T is for type, B is for brush, blah blah blah. Then we have a whole chapter in corporate artwork Part 2: Creating Artwork and Logos and then on to Part 3: Working With Clients Files which from experience I can tell you boils down to telling them for the millionth time "No! I want you to save it as a J-Peg, No not GIF, NO NO NO this is not for your website its for a t-shirt!" and playing with computer color correction voodoo like Scanner Curves and Monitor Curves and the all knowing, all encompassing, Pantone Colors. "Well that red was not sooo red on my computer screen. What? You printed 500 shirts already?!"
COLOR SEPARATIONS AND THE DAMAGE DONE
Stuffed in the back of the book after page 389 we get to the big money shot of Photoshop 7.0 for Screen Printers, Part 4: Color Separations, here is where the price of the job and the amount of effort in printing come into play. The decisions you make in how many screens will be used and how many screens you can afford to make for the job effect the price you quote and the quality of the work you do. Will the image be photo realistic? Will the t-shirt be white or a dark color? How many Channels or colors will you use? How many stations are on your press? Is it automatic or manual? Do you really love your job that much?
So here the book separates the various tasks into four main parts...
SPOT COLOR SEPARATIONS
Spot Colors are for the simplest tasks in Screen Printing, used for images with very few colors involved and uncomplicated designs. This takes very little effort to setup and print and it is how most Screen Printers start off and make their money.
PROCESS COLOR SEPARATIONS
Here is where the going gets tough and the tough go mental. Process Color is used for all those photo realistic t-shirts you see at rock concerts, they are difficult to create, setup and print. This is also where you will find various companies such as $Fast Films$ and $Serichrome Seps$ selling you their software or their services. They are in essence selling you Photoshop plugins or Macros that do this task repeatedly, based on formula, for you. Just stick in the number of screens you want and the color of shirt you are using and there you go. Now it is great to have push button capabilities to do this work, but here you learn what they are doing and how they are doing it, so even if you buy a software package to do this task it is good to know what is going on and how to tweak those settings and Channels, that this software spews out at you, to your needs.
INDEXED COLOR SEPARATIONS
Index Color to me is an art form; it takes a more complex picture and limits the amount of colors to be used to only the main ones found in the image itself thus making it less complicated to print. You constantly run the risk of course or grainy looking prints and posterizing the image, it can be done though and I have seen some truly stunning shirts made using this process. Here is where the Screen Printer is balancing the limitations of his press against the gamut of colors needed to create the image, and the color of the shirt itself, benefiting the customer in price with the quality of work on the actual t-shirt, it takes skillz dude!
SIMULATED PROCESS COLOR SEPARATIONS
Not much to tell on this one, basically this is simply a hybrid between Spot Color and Index Color that is all.
PRINT DAMN YOU! PRINT! NO! GET ME THE AXE!
Now comes the weird part of Photoshop 7.0 for Screen Printers where I find the most problems. Why did they separate out the Part 5: Printing and not do anything with it really? This part of the book does not flow for me or provide the type of support someone using this book really needs. Most people going about doing Color Separations make a decision based on the image provided and then follow through from the choice to the actual printing of the film which is different for each type of separation process. In other words the separation process dictates the printing process.
Here in Photoshop 7.0 for Screen Printers they decided to make a whole chapter on printing again defining the four main ways to separate an image and then showing you the steps to print it out. In printing out the image there are some complex decisions to make concerning Screen Angles, Moiré, LPI, and DPI and there is allot of ground to be covered in making these choices. Unfortunately these choices are done again in the step-by-step manner (slide tab a into tab b) that is used in showing you the basics of Photoshop.
I do not find this layout helpful or very well titled or sufficiently indexed in the back of the book. Joli Ballew does discuss some of the more advanced, confusing, and critical choices of printing Halftones along the way in various side boxes and in-depth explanations but these are not readily found in the index. You are making the person find this information after you have taken them through the process of Color Separation and you have not provided a way to identify the different choices made in the process of printing. BAD MOVE! I would have plainly labeled and titled and indexed the steps for CMYK Screen Angles for Process Color Separations and indexed the hell out of it mind you, even if this meant redundancy, before providing the excellent step-by-step commentary and those great tips.
A LITTLE SOMETHING MISSING
What I see as my main complaint though... If your book depends on Photoshop 7 (Which is already outdated, such is the shelf life of Adobe software.) Why not splurge and give the nitty gritty about what brands of printers, Such as the Epson 3000 most people are tending to use due to the acidic nature of the particular Epson QuickDry™ ink used in this one *low cost model* (acidic ink and film: true solid black on film guys) and other various whys and hows of products they are using currently? Why not show how to use free Post Script emulation software such as GhostScript so as to save yourself or your company money? Maybe a whole chapter devoted to various cheap or free RIP software and how some RIPs do Halftones while others do not.
This is exactly where Color Separation can become an expensive experiment for the person just starting and where there is not a whole lot of unbiased information out there and it would have provided the ability to use Photoshop 7.0 for Screen Printers much more easily to begin with.
Sure, there is incredible information in this book if you already have access to a Post Script printer or RIP software and a professional inkjet or laser printer but making it cheaper or easier to get these items would have meant more people benefiting from the various instructions provided here. That would have been technically challenging but also a major selling point. Because lets face it, most people buying this book are not likely going to be able to personally afford the hundreds of dollars associated with some of this software I am talking about.
So if anyone is interested and ready for the adventure and the incredible headache in attempting try this free or 'on the cheap' get your Google going and type in the following...
GhostScript, Gimp-Print, CUPS
PRINTFAB
A SUMMARY OR SOMETHING LIKE IT
I hate being negative about Photoshop 7.0 for Screen Printers since it is pretty much a one of a kind book and in the end a very necessary resource for Screen Printers. I just have had to beat my head again and again and again over various topics provided in this book and in doing so have a different perspective about the subject matter. Hopefully there will be an update and maybe a rethinking of certain parts of the book so that it can only be even more useful. All in all it is impressive in the amount of information it does try to cover and it does so providing at least a solid foundation to start learning and researching the more specialized aspects of the processes and materials covered. Excellent Job!
I fully recommend Photoshop 7.0 for Screen Printers to even the most advanced users out there.
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