ouve made a great design for a client and now they need it printed on T-shirtsand they have asked

you for separations. Although talking to a T-shirt screen-printing company for advice is always a good idea, here are the basics of making spot-color separations. 1 THE BASICS OF SEPARATIONS Before we go into a detailed description of creating separations in hotoshop, heres a !uick primer. A two-color logo, in this e"ample green and gold, re!uires two separations# one for each color. $hen you look at the separated artwork, whatever is being printed at %&&' appears black while anything using less ink (to create a lighter color) appears in shades of gray. *otice that some of the design is missing on the gold color artwork where the green te"t will print.

2 WORKING WITH EXISITING ARTWORK $hen youre working with e"isting artwork in hotoshop and you dont have layers, you have to manually create the separations by selecting each main color and creating spot color channels. +our ,ob will be easier if you either have an image with a limited number of colors, or you alter some colors to limit the total number of colors. To get started, open hotoshop and go to $indow-Application .rame to set up your canvas (youll need this for the ne"t step). Then, go to .ile-/pen to open your e"isting artwork.

3 CREATE A SECOND DOCUMENT /ne of the simplest ways to create a spot color version of a document is to create a second document the same si0e as the first. To do this, go to .ile-*ew and in the *ew dialog, click the reset drop-down menu and choose your e"isting artwork document. 1lick /2. This will create a new document the same si0e as your original. To make things easier, go to $indow-Arrange-Tile to create a split screen of your two documents.

4 SELECT THE FIRST COLOR 3n your original document, choose 4elect-1olor 5ange to select your first color. (1hoose a main color at %&&' opacity, not a color thats at a reduced opacity.) 6ake sure the 3mage radio button is active, and use the 7yedropper tool in the dialog to select an area of your first color (we chose the dark red color) in the dialogs preview section. After youve made your selection, activate the 4election radio button to see your selection as a mask, with the white areas representing your selection and the black areas indicating what isnt selected. 8sing this option will help make your selection precise.

5 FUZZINESS AND PREVIEW OPTIONS 9ery often youll need to move the .u00iness slider to include all the selected areas, but if you do, be careful not to go too far, or similar colors will be selected. /ne way to help with this is to change the 4election review from *one to $hite 6atte. This will show a preview on your document with your selection in color and everything else in white. 3n our e"ample, the selection we made showed that some of the lighter red color was being selected, so we pulled back the .u00iness slider slightly (well add the lighter colors later).

6 ADD A SPOT CHANNEL 1lick /2 to accept the color range settings and press the 6 key to select the 5ectangle 6ar!uee tool (or any mar!uee tool, it doesnt matter which one). lace your cursor on a portion of your selection and your mouse will turn into a white arrow with a small selection bo" underneath. $hen this happens, click-and-drag your selection into the second document, and then hold down the 4hift key to center it on the document. Then, in the 1hannels panel ($indow-1hannels), click the flyout menu and choose *ew 4pot 1hannel.

7 CHOOSE THE SPOT COLOR AND FILL 3n the *ew 4pot 1hannel dialog, name the channel and make sure that the color swatch holds the color you want to use. 1lick /2. :epending on the advice you get from the screen printing company, you can either choose a antone color or ;any< color that your screen printer will replace with the actual colorthe important thing here is separating the colors. 4ince you have a selection, the spot channel will automatically appear in color in your document, and black on white in the 1hannels panel.

ADD ADDITIONAL CHANNELS 1reate additional spot channels for each main color (shades of the main colorsreduced opacity colorswill come later). 3n the main document, press 1ommand-: ( 1# 1trl-:) to deselect your previous selection and follow 4teps = through > to create new spot channels. *ote# After making each selection, click the color swatch at the bottom of the Toolbo" to note the color being selected? if you dont do this, hotoshop will use the last color selected when a new spot channel is created. 7ventually, youll have a spot channel for each main color, and the image will look pretty good with only a few missing pieces.

! SELECT THE LIGHTER VERSION *ow go back to the main document and select the lighter, reduced opacity version of the first color (in this e"ample, the lighter red color). Again, use any mar!uee tool to dragand-drop the selection into the second document, and press-and-hold the 4hift key to place the selection in the center of the document.

1" FILL THE FIRST SPOT CHANNEL 6ake sure the appropriate spot channel (for our e"ample, the red spot channel) is active in the 1hannels panel, and then go to 7dit-.ill. Because we want this to print as a lighter version of our color, select @&' Aray from the 8se drop-down menu and click /2. /n the document image, youll now see some lighter red areas while on the spot channel in the 1hannels panel youll see %&&' black and @&' black.

11 FILL#DELETE OTHER SPOT CHANNELS 5epeat this operation for each of the lighter colors, clicking the appropriate spot channel before filling. /nce youre done filling the spot channels, you can delete the other default channels (5BA, 5ed, Areen, and Blue) by selecting them in the 1hannels panel and clicking on the :elete 1urrent 1hannel icon (trash can) at the bottom of the panel leaving you with ,ust the spot channels that you created.

12 VIEW EACH SPOT CHANNEL Bust to make sure that everything worked the way you intended, take a look at each spot channel, remembering that %&&' black represents %&&' of your color and the gray areas show where the color will print lighter. To do this, click the 7ye icons on and off before each spot channel in the 1hannels panel. To view your first spot channel, turn off the other channels 7ye icons, leaving the first channels icon on. 5epeat for each channel.

13 DO A TEST PRINT +ou can also do a test print to make sure that each color prints as a separation the way that you e"pect. 1hoose .ile- rint and in the rint dialog, make sure 1olor 6anagement is selected at the top right. 4et 1olor Candling to 4eparations. 3n our e"ample, we chose Dandscape for orientation and enabled the 4cale to .it 6edia checkbo". $e also went back up to the 1olor 6anagement menu and selected /utput. 3n the rinting 6arks section, we enabled the 1alibration Bars and 5egistration 6arks checkbo"es. *ow when you print, you should get a separate piece of paper for each of your spot channels.

14 SAVE THE FILE Before saving your file, check with your screen printing company to see what format they re!uire# they may be happy to get your hotoshop document saved as a standard 4:, or may suggest that you choose hotoshop :14 E.& as the format.

ALL IMAGES BY DAVE CROSS UNLESS OTHERWISE NOTED