Marco Olivotto, globally renowned pre-press consultant, wrote for FESPA about a new technique for optimising pre-press colour correction ahead of the Digital Textile Conference.
We're in the middle of a transition: the textile printing industry is moving from the traditional screen-printing technology to the new digital machines. This is similar to what happened and still is happening in the world of printed paper.
New technologies should be better than the old, in principle, otherwise people wouldn't move on: the advantages of digital printing are known to all, indeed. But we also should be aware that every new technology brings new challenges and problems that need to be addressed properly, the most important being: how do we make a smooth transition to the new?
I mainly deal with image manipulation and preparation, both as a producer and a consultant. This may seem removed from the textile industry, but it is not. An example: files for screen-printing are very often prepared in Photoshop and exploit a clumsy image mode known as Multichannel.
It works, because the additional channels can be configured as spot color channels and exported to PDF as individual plates. But is it the best way to go? How do we convert a Multichannel file to RGB properly if we need to print it digitally? Even more important: in the peculiar and wide field of textile printing, is Photoshop the best choice to manipulate colors in case we need to?
Important questions often do not have a final, clean-cut answer. The most honest reply one can give is: it depends. Some cases are easy to handle, provided we limit the scope of our analysis to specific areas.
As an example, there exists an important category of motifs, namely patterns, which are better handled in Illustrator than Photoshop due to a number of tools available in the flagship drawing app by Adobe. The problem is, of course, backward compatibility: can we move something originally drawn in Photoshop into Illustrator for final processing? Which way is the best?
I've been working on a very flexible technique, actually a workflow, which yields interesting results in the majority of cases – if we limit ourselves to patterns. Suppose one needs to try out a different combination of colors on a pattern in Photoshop, where each color is defined by a spot channel: it can be done, but it's not exactly a laugh a minute. One has to go through one colour at a time and a relevant number of clicks are needed to select a replacement color. It's not an intuitive process and its slowness can severely limit one's creativity.
Illustrator has tools which make this operation a breeze, and that's something I will demonstrate live at the FESPA Digital Textile Conference in Milan, in October. The basic idea is that one starts from a Photoshop document (either Multichannel or not). Whether we want an output suitable for screen-printing or digital is irrelevant: we may have both with little effort.
A non-Multichannel document is required because Illustrator doesn't support such format, so a conversion is mandatory. The resulting RGB document is opened in Illustrator and the original raster image is converted into a vector image: this is a function which has been vastly improved in the most recent releases of the app. Then heavy weaponry is summoned: a function called Recolor Artwork, in particular.
The flexibility of this command, often unrighteously considered difficult, is enormous, and just a few clicks enable one to modify the colors of the artwork at will, either one by one, in groups, or together, and with a live preview. Finally, the output: either RGB for a digital workflow, or spot colors taken from a library for traditional screen-printing.
This procedure is not only suitable for creative changes, but also for tweaking the colors of the artwork before printing in case one needs to match a sample when color management slips aside, as it sometimes does.
In my mind, the term "transition" does not imply jumping from one rock to another without preparation, also because the landing rock may be hideously slippery and therefore dangerous. I can easily imagine a period of time which will see screen and digital live together and get along as best as they can, so it's up to us to provide new workflows which do not obliterate the past and yet prepare for the future.
These are sorely needed, and the most intelligent thing we can do is learn from some of the mistakes done in the past in the field of printed paper. We should therefore remember that color management is necessary, but also that it won't solve all the problems and vagaries of the printing process; that an old solution is not sacred and can often be improved with some knowledge and fantasy; that a new workflow is not necessarily always better than the old. And so on.
Being this a blog post, it would be awkward to outline the whole procedure in detail. Also, I think its first official appearance should be at the DTC. But if there's interest, some kind of tutorial on pdf or video may be in order, in due course. Stay tuned!
Tweet me @marcoolivotto and don't forget to use the hash tag #fespadtc
FESPA Digital Textile Conference
www.fespa.com/digital-textile-conference
