Magic buttons are a color separation plugin for Adobe Photoshop CC & CS6. It contains all the most necessary tools for color separation in screen printing. Magic buttons allows you to minimize routine tasks and make the process of preparing files for screen printing in Photoshop simple and straightforward.

Preparation of files, of course, is one of the most important tasks in screen printing. Color separation affects the final result more than any other part of the printing process. To obtain an excellent result, it is important to know and understand a number of aspects: the order of colors, opacity and composition of ink, the amount of pigment, adhesion, the possibility of migration of dyes on different substrates, and so on. In addition, it is necessary to take into account the limited range of tone reproduced by silk-screen printing, and, therefore, the need to split the range into several printing plates and colors.

New version of the Magic Button plugin 2.3

Magic Buttons v2.3 Color separation Photoshop plugin

What’s new?

– A new set of tools Dark colors allows you to generate shadows and colorized dark shades for each color. Now you can reduce the amount of black to shade vivid colors and use more natural shadows of the desired color. These prints look more natural and professional. The Dark Colors toolbox contains ready-made options for generating shadows for each color. In addition, the set has a function to manually generate shadows. Using the Manual color button, you can adjust the color composition of each selected area.

– Mezzo-rasterization tool. Now you can use an irregular raster. 4 types of Dot work and 6 types of Line work are available + preview mode, in this mode you can see how the image will look after rasterization and choose the most suitable option. The plugin supports combining different types of raster (regular and irregular) in one file.

– Fixed bug rasterization of previous versions. Now when you select a round dot, you get a round dot of the raster.

In order to facilitate the execution of all these tasks, the Magic Buttons plugin was created. It contains the necessary tools of color separation for screen printing, with their help you simplify a number of routine tasks and can focus on the main thing.

Tools
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Color separation tools

Color Filter Set. Allows you to divide any image into selected colors.

Dark colors and color adjustment set. Using this set you can adjust the composition of each selected area according to the color composition. Includes ready-made shadow patterns and manual mode with fine adjustment of color composition.

Gray Range Set. Converts an image to different parts of a gray range.
Used for color separation of mono-color images (human skin, colored glass, metal objects)

Monochrome Set. Generates two kinds of black, two kinds of gray and highlight.

Operation Set. Contains popular functions for color separation.

Rasterization set. Rasterizes the image and stores the result in the channels with the same colors that were in the original.
Suitable for both viewing and editing images in a raster, and film output.

Read more about the tools in the Functions overview

Color separation of human skin

In order for human skin to look great in screen printing, you must give it enough attention. In some cases, you can print it with red, yellow and black, but, to be honest, I do this when I am limited in the number of printing plates. With the Magic Buttons plug-in, you will always have a set of precise tools at hand.

Read more about the color separation of human skin in the Additional Colors section.

Сolor separation by plugin Magic Buttons v.2.3. Simulated process, plastisol inks.

Advanced color separation tools

When preparing a color separation file, it is very often necessary to edit a separate color channel. Since in software for color separation, channels are generated using a filter system, the color composition of channels that are close in color spectrum to each other can intersect. The filter cannot completely eliminate parasitic overlays from related parts of the color spectrum on its own. Just for independent editing of the color composition of a separate channel, the Manual Color tool is provided.

With this tool, you can edit (for example) the gray color so that it matches the shade you want. The plugin generates many types of gray for comfortable work, and you can edit each of them depending on your task. This gives a huge scope for solving creative and professional problems in color separation. In this video, we will just look at an example of how the Manual Color tool works with shades of gray.

Tool for precise editing of the color composition of the channel

Color separation of monochrome image

When color separation of monochrome images to screen printing, tone accuracy is very important. Since all attention is focused not so much on colors, but on tone. In order to convey all the tonal hues of the image, you have several types of gray generation, manual black generation, several types of highlights.

Read more about monochrome color separation in the Gray Works section.

Users Manual

In order to understand step-by-step actions, you can download the Magic Buttons Photoshop plugin user’s manual. It describes in detail the procedure for color separation, illustrations and explanations.

Download Magic Buttons Tutorial PDF file

Read more about the features of the plugin in the Learning materials.

Screen printed and scanned

We printed and scanned several prints in high resolution and 50 LPI lineature so that you could see exactly how the finished print looks like, prepared for printing with the Magic Buttons. Scanned files can be multiplied up to fabric fibers.

See more high-resolution scanned prints in our Portfolio.

Print fragment