When I was a wee bit younger, I was fortunate enough to be surrounded by some pretty incredible and creative people. I rubbed elbows with the creative elite and I somehow survived. One of my more fond memories was the day I accompanied one of the famed artists to an artist's fair. There were two reasons that I was invited on this trip...1) Moral support and 2) I was the only one who had a car...So, there was really only one reason why I was attending this extremely esoteric fair of egos, inflated and deflated alike. Whilst my creative counterpart went to frolic unleashed in the Crayola Forest, I was left unattended to wander through the other parts of Candy-land hoping that I may find some small model or craft...a choking hazard of some sort. Unbeknown to me, this would be a day where I realized that I, too, in fact, had a creative element and, more importantly, I had just found a clear outlet to my creativity. This was the day that I found the 4 Color, Screen Printing Machine.
For a measly $300, I made my purchase of the 4 color print machine with aspirations to conquer the T-Shirt world. There was soon to be an onslaught of my designs on t-shirts all over the world. My inescapable message would be heard across the land! From chest front to shoulders and back, the world would carry my message, my voice, my credo...
The unfortunate realty soon hit when I realized (back then) that I really had no idea how to operate and work the 4 Color Screen Printing machine. I didn't realize, either, that I was short not only knowledge...but more equipment. Emulsion? CYMK? Squeegees? Dark Rooms? Like most of my little projects and adventures things began to get difficult and my eagerness and enthusiasm for becoming the next t-shirt tycoon were beginning to succumb to the reality that I was never going to get this business going.
The good news began when my creative roommates began doing some research and eventually (through a lot of trial and error) began printing some decent t-shirts of their own. By now, I was pretty much out of the mix. I had long since abandoned the equipment and didn't really put any money into the fine tuning, the new equipment or all of the little supplies along the way. I did, however, show in times of the print to put in a little elbow grease to help with some orders when it came time. My friends took my dream from me and gave it a good run. Years later, I would leave the U.S.A and head to warmer waters following other Sirens. What became of those friends over the years, I'm really not too sure...I know one has art shows in Japan, a cartoon that is syndicated and had his own line of Hallmark cards...you know...successful.
Two months ago, a friend of mine adopted a small storage unit near the beach in Central America. An odd prize, I know but it's all too common to inherit things with the transient travelers of the third world. In this little, unlocked shed lay what looked like some sort of helicopter. No one really knew how to identify this odd looking contraption but someone had heard that it was a machine to print t-shirts. The town consensus came up short and, eventually, the news came to me that there was an unidentified printing object near the per. Upon inspection, I realized that, in fact, it was a rough looking, 4 color printing press complete with flash oven and some frames. It had been nearly 12 years since I had encountered one of these creative beasts and they always seemed to sneak up on me in times when I'm feeling creative and open for new adventures.
A few days of sanding and painting, picking up some basic supplies from a company in the capital city and reading a few articles, I decided it was time to seriously start printing some shirts. No support group..only armed with the internet and a small budget (which was sure to dwindle) I began the process of printing t-shirts with a 4 Color Screen Printing machine. This blog will hopefully show some of those new to screen printing some of my trials and errors. I've been let down by the internet...I wasn't able to really find a simple explanation of printing t shirts. All the articles I found used jargon unknown to me...I hope that those who partake in this blog will find simple language, coupled with simple technique and achieve superb results so that your designs and your message can be broadcast on the paid, personal sponsorship that is the famed T-Shirt.
Good luck,
The Screening Banshee
Monday, May 10, 2010
Sunday, May 9, 2010
Understanding CMYK, RGB and Spot Colors
There is an amazing amount of information on the web about the science of colors and printing. I found my way through the labyrinth but not unscathed. This blog will only focus on printing t shirts using the 4 color print and spot color methods only. So, what the hell is 4 color printing? The 4 color philosophy is that all images that can be interpreted by the human eye can be made of 4 colors. We all know (to some degree) that mixing certain colors create other colors. Glad bags...blue and yellow makes green.
Well...if you take a simple picture (regardless of the picture [generally speaking]) you can break that picture down into 4 colors. Those 4 colors are Cyan (which is like a teal or a blue green), Magenta (which is a purplish color), Yellow (which is a...yellow color) and Black (which is "Key"). You can read all about the CMYK color history here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CYMK Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black make up CMYK (K is black). With these four colors you can literally print damn near whatever you need.
RGB stands for Red, Green and Blue. This is a very common format for pictures, video, television, etc...this is the same basic principles of CMYK but a little more advanced. RGB has the capabilities of producing millions of colors that far exceed any detail of any shirt that you will ever print. RGB puts you in the Crayola world offering you colors like "Doves Tongue Pink" and things like that...unnecessary. Our Crayola box only has 4 colors...very, very boring but gets the job done! Any good photo manipulating software will allow you to change a picture from RGB to the needed CMYK.
Let's use this picture as an example... This is a great first shirt design. It's simple and has a great color selection...and, let's face it...it makes for a cool Bob Marley shirt. We will assume that we'll be printing this design on a white t shirt...so, simply, I can say I see the colors Yellow, Red, Green and Black. Black and Yellow are part of the CMYK colors...so those two are easy. It's combinations of Cyan, Magenta and Yellow that will make up what we see as Red and Green. It's a subtle combination of color that will trick the eye into thinking that our Cyan, Magenta and Yellow, properly mixed is Red and Green. So, how is this done?
CMYK is achieved using what they call halftones. When a printer prints a picture, it uses a series of dots or lines to create the image. Following the same concepts of CMYK, the printer knows that if the lines of color or dots of color are close enough together that your eye will only be able to process the lines and dots together creating color. The shape of the dot, the size of the dot and the resolution all determine how good or how tricked are your eyes. Resolution can be defined by d.p.i (dots per inch) or l.p.i (lines per inch). Literally, the printer and computer will determine how many dots or lines will be printed per inch of document. 300 d.p.i is about as low as you'll want to go when printing shirts. Depending on the program you use and the printer, 1200 d.p.i can be achieved which is a ton of really, really small dots close together...offering a higher resolution image.
So, what are halftones? Halftones are half dots. That's right! All those little dots per inch are now going to be cut into partial dots! Each partial dot will contain certain percentages of Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black depending on the color we want to achieve. I will talk all about Halftones on another post...
I will fully explore the equipment you need and programs that help...but I use Photoshop C2. It's not a new version but it's crucial to doing any of these operations. I'll get more into photoshop and step by step half toning in another post. For right now let's stick with concepts and philosophy.
Coming back to the Bob Marley and the Wailers emblem...I will now show you that logo broken down in CMYK.
Eventually, you'll understand that these 4 color breakdowns are the very ones you'll use later to make your screens. Remember that we're slicing and dissecting these complete colors into their fundamental percentages of CMYK...so they're going to look like different shades of gray as they represent location and amount of color (saturation)...they won't show the true colors themselves.
Here is the Magenta slice of the logo: Note that the "Red" area has a high percentage and concentration of Magenta and the white and yellow areas have hardly any at all.
Here is the Yellow slice of the logo:
Note the amount of Yellow needed to create the Green and the Red....and, of course, the yellow..
Here is the slice of the Cyan: Lots of Cyan to make the Green...just a touch to make the Yellow (obviously it's not a pure CMYK Yellow) and a touch to finish of what we see as Red.
Finally, here is the slicing of Black: Black is usually an easier color to see...There is a pie piece present in the middle of the circle...This image might need some cleaning up...I wouldn't allow that line to be there. I would keep the black limited to the ring on the outside.
Now that you have seen a simple logo broken down into its CMYK slices hopefully you have a general concept as to using this method to print shirts. CMYK is a great way to transfer a picture onto a shirt.
Another printing method is printing in Spot Colors.
Spot color printing is actually matching and mixing the paints and colors to print all colors that exist. If you plan on only printing text and letters then you may have better luck printing "spot" colors. Where you buy "Blue" right out of the jar and that is the color of your letters. If someone comes to you with a funky shade of pink...then you would need to hand mix some colors together to create that special shade. So, to use our Bob Marley logo again....you would need to purchase Black paint, Green paint, Red Paint and Yellow Paint. If the shade of Green and Red that you purchased weren't exactly the color you wanted you may be forced to begin adding other colors, highlights, etc to get the right composition of paint to achieve the desired color. I have no patience and less luck mixing paints to get these colors. This is why I've gone forward with the CMYK process.
CMYK is the philosophy that all images can be dissected into 4 colors. Those colors are Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black (CMYK). The eye perceives color when these 4 colors are set very close together. The resolution is defined by d.p.i or l.p.i and the percentages of each of the CMYK together determines the final color.
I hope this gives a basic understanding of what is CMYK. Please comment and let me know how this information helped you or how I can further explain areas that are too broad or confusing. I will be posting several other sections and, eventually, I will have an absolute step by step on how to print a shirt. From design to shirt.
The Screening Banshee
Well...if you take a simple picture (regardless of the picture [generally speaking]) you can break that picture down into 4 colors. Those 4 colors are Cyan (which is like a teal or a blue green), Magenta (which is a purplish color), Yellow (which is a...yellow color) and Black (which is "Key"). You can read all about the CMYK color history here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CYMK Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black make up CMYK (K is black). With these four colors you can literally print damn near whatever you need.
RGB stands for Red, Green and Blue. This is a very common format for pictures, video, television, etc...this is the same basic principles of CMYK but a little more advanced. RGB has the capabilities of producing millions of colors that far exceed any detail of any shirt that you will ever print. RGB puts you in the Crayola world offering you colors like "Doves Tongue Pink" and things like that...unnecessary. Our Crayola box only has 4 colors...very, very boring but gets the job done! Any good photo manipulating software will allow you to change a picture from RGB to the needed CMYK.
CMYK is achieved using what they call halftones. When a printer prints a picture, it uses a series of dots or lines to create the image. Following the same concepts of CMYK, the printer knows that if the lines of color or dots of color are close enough together that your eye will only be able to process the lines and dots together creating color. The shape of the dot, the size of the dot and the resolution all determine how good or how tricked are your eyes. Resolution can be defined by d.p.i (dots per inch) or l.p.i (lines per inch). Literally, the printer and computer will determine how many dots or lines will be printed per inch of document. 300 d.p.i is about as low as you'll want to go when printing shirts. Depending on the program you use and the printer, 1200 d.p.i can be achieved which is a ton of really, really small dots close together...offering a higher resolution image.
So, what are halftones? Halftones are half dots. That's right! All those little dots per inch are now going to be cut into partial dots! Each partial dot will contain certain percentages of Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black depending on the color we want to achieve. I will talk all about Halftones on another post...
I will fully explore the equipment you need and programs that help...but I use Photoshop C2. It's not a new version but it's crucial to doing any of these operations. I'll get more into photoshop and step by step half toning in another post. For right now let's stick with concepts and philosophy.
Coming back to the Bob Marley and the Wailers emblem...I will now show you that logo broken down in CMYK.
Eventually, you'll understand that these 4 color breakdowns are the very ones you'll use later to make your screens. Remember that we're slicing and dissecting these complete colors into their fundamental percentages of CMYK...so they're going to look like different shades of gray as they represent location and amount of color (saturation)...they won't show the true colors themselves.
Here is the Yellow slice of the logo:
Note the amount of Yellow needed to create the Green and the Red....and, of course, the yellow..
Here is the slice of the Cyan: Lots of Cyan to make the Green...just a touch to make the Yellow (obviously it's not a pure CMYK Yellow) and a touch to finish of what we see as Red.
Now that you have seen a simple logo broken down into its CMYK slices hopefully you have a general concept as to using this method to print shirts. CMYK is a great way to transfer a picture onto a shirt.
Another printing method is printing in Spot Colors.
Spot color printing is actually matching and mixing the paints and colors to print all colors that exist. If you plan on only printing text and letters then you may have better luck printing "spot" colors. Where you buy "Blue" right out of the jar and that is the color of your letters. If someone comes to you with a funky shade of pink...then you would need to hand mix some colors together to create that special shade. So, to use our Bob Marley logo again....you would need to purchase Black paint, Green paint, Red Paint and Yellow Paint. If the shade of Green and Red that you purchased weren't exactly the color you wanted you may be forced to begin adding other colors, highlights, etc to get the right composition of paint to achieve the desired color. I have no patience and less luck mixing paints to get these colors. This is why I've gone forward with the CMYK process.
CMYK is the philosophy that all images can be dissected into 4 colors. Those colors are Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black (CMYK). The eye perceives color when these 4 colors are set very close together. The resolution is defined by d.p.i or l.p.i and the percentages of each of the CMYK together determines the final color.
I hope this gives a basic understanding of what is CMYK. Please comment and let me know how this information helped you or how I can further explain areas that are too broad or confusing. I will be posting several other sections and, eventually, I will have an absolute step by step on how to print a shirt. From design to shirt.
The Screening Banshee
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