Just Bitchin'

So, people who read this may have no idea what the hell I'm talking about, but I just gotta complain! I did separations for this t-shirt artwork on Sunday. It was a NIGHTMARE! Basically, the way screen-printing works is a bit like a printer, but instead of putting together cyan, magenta, yellow, and black to make all the colors in the image, you actually have to pick out every individual color in the image and print on its own screen. So, this artwork was a photo of an SUV parked in front of some brick building with flag poles, and shrubery, and umbrellas, and a big flag, and...and...and...just so much shit.

Well, the photo was only 3 inches wide at 300 DPI (it's printing at 10" wide), nothing was separated into layers, the photo of the building was taken with someones crappy point and shoot, it was noisy, the color was off, I could go on. So much crap wrong with it.

So, I had to interpolate the whole image to be the correct size for printing, then I had the horrendous job of finding every color in the image, but since the color of the photo was off, nothing was as it should have been. Then, on top of that, the photo was noisy, so getting a smooth blend from one color to the other was pretty much impossible.

After about 5 hours I finished, then sent on to the client. That was ROUGH! It's hard because I won't see how it's printing, and I won't know how to fix it very easily if something looks off. I'm just crossing my fingers they don't call me with problems. Ugh. Separations.

So, just a word for those of you that are reading that may ever want a T-shirt printed. Make sure your art is the size you want it printed at 300 DPI. Make sure your artwork is in LAYERS! Something made in Illustrator is best, but if you're using a photo don't even try to grab something of the internet to use. Not going to work. Let someone who knows what they're doing with a camera take the picture. Then, your shirt won't cost you $200 before it even gets on the press.

Thank you for letting me vent. More photos after this brief break.