Art for screen printing

O'Prez

Guys I did a design for a band in TwistedBrush and they now want it printed on shirts so that means colour separation and all that. When I designed it I saved it as a tiff but that won't work for screen printing. Is there a way to convert the tiff or can I use TwistedBrush to output print-ready work? Failing that, what's the simplest process in Photoshop or Illustrator for outputting art ready for screen printing? Here's the design.

flanree

Assuming its going on black T Shirts you only need white and red separations. If you open it in photoshop you can use Colour Range to select all of the white area and again for the red. You are best working in CMYK colour mode. Image should be actual print size at 300 dpi. When you have the selection just fill it solid black in a new layer to make each separation. Better still, make new channels and call them White and Red with the relevant solid fills in each. You can also keep these channels when saved as a tif file (even a greyscale tif). In T Shirt printing on black you normally have an extra separation called a flash base. This is a composite of all the colour areas (red and white in this case) printed first in white ink under everything. This is then cured or dried and the colours, including white go on top. Within the flash base, under the nonwhite colours (red here) you should make the fill a fraction smaller so the white flash base doesn't creep out at the edges. In photoshop, select the red area, use select > modify > contract and set it at 2 pixels. This thinner selection can then be added to the flash base along with the original white area.

O'Prez

Great advice. Thanks very much for taking the time to help. Very straightforward stuff and exactly what I wanted to know

Marty Sergerson

Why do you have your signature and a copyright symbol on someone else's artwork?

O'Prez

Marty Sergerson wrote: »

Why do you have your signature and a copyright symbol on someone else's artwork?

The design was the band's idea. They wanted a psychobilly version of the Iron Maiden shirt so that's what I did....redrew it. I didn't get the original artist to redraw it. I redrew it! I sign everything I do and as for the watermark...bands always ask for them so people don't run off with the design.

Marty Sergerson

Thats a copyright symbol if I'm not mistaken. So your protecting an image you have redrawn effectively reproducing Derek Riggs work which may be owned by Iron Maiden.

Unless the band you made that for got permission off Iron Maiden or Derek Riggs, they don't have any reason to be worrying about someone robbing "their" design.

Fair enough your doing t-shirts for bands, fair play to you but theres a line between homage and rip-off. Putting a copyright symbol on a reproduced artwork says it all.

O'Prez

Marty Sergerson wrote: »

Thats a copyright symbol if I'm not mistaken. So your protecting an image you have redrawn effectively reproducing Derek Riggs work which may be owned by Iron Maiden.

Unless the band you made that for got permission off Iron Maiden or Derek Riggs, they don't have any reason to be worrying about someone robbing "their" design.

Fair enough your doing t-shirts for bands, fair play to you but theres a line between homage and rip-off. Putting a copyright symbol on a reproduced artwork says it all.

I'm sure he got well paid. I got a free shirt. It's hardly a case of anyone making loads of money out of it. Not me anyway.

Marty Sergerson

Well if you want to lose money on it, keep that copyright symbol on it.
The owner of that image may catch up with you sooner or later. You probably don't give two sh*ts though, just some friendly advice.

O'Prez

Marty Sergerson wrote: »

Well if you want to lose money on it, keep that copyright symbol on it.
The owner of that image may catch up with you sooner or later. You probably don't give two sh*ts though, just some friendly advice.

Thanks yeah you could be right. I didn't really think about it as the psycho scene is so small. Friendly advice is always welcome