In many ways, the quality of your color separation for screen printing depends on how you work with gray. Gray carries several functions:
- independently participates in the formation of soft shadows
- gray as a compound is present in colors, making them muted
- gray complements white and black, taking on part of the range being filled
- with the help of colored gray you can form monochromatic parts of the color image
- colored gray plays a leading role in highlighting the colors of human skin
Since, in most cases, you have a limited number of printing stations at your disposal, all these gray tasks need to fit a maximum of 2-3 stencils.
The plugin supports several modes of operation with gray. These are Middle tone, Gray and Color 2th functions.
Middle tone
This feature highlights the overall average tone of all colors, excluding shadows and light areas. Often used as the first neutral color, which is then superimposed shadows, lighter areas and colors. The operation of the Middle tone does not depend on the presence of gray in the image. Thus, when working with color images without the presence of gray, you can also highlight the middle tone.
- Note! When overlaying flowers on the Middle tone, you can subtract them from the gray. To do this, select the channel with the desired color, switch to the channel with gray and delete (or erase) the selected fragment. More on this will be discussed in the relevant chapter.
Gray
This is a classic gray that highlights the bright shadows of the image. Usually used as an addition to white, black, other gray. The Gray function depends on the presence of gray in the image.
Color 2nd
The function of selecting the part of the tone range in which shadows are usually present. By default it is colored in brown. Color 2nd does not depend on the presence of gray in the image. Convenient for colorizing and working with color images, when you tint the resulting gray in the color of the shadows of the image.
- Note! The Middle tone and Color 2nd buttons work from Flatten Image mode (there should be a lock on the layer).
Pay attention to how the color is assigned when using the Color 2nd button (and similar buttons from the Additional colors set). You move the Color picker to the left to the end.
Black & White color separation video
We recommend that you download files and repeat all the operations that were on the video.