Photoshop Tutorial - Separating Colors For Screen Printing

[Florence Belushi]

If you are new to screen printing, you may not know where to begin
when it comes to getting artwork ready for printing. Separating images
into colors is an important step. Luckily Photoshop makes this pretty
easy. I am going to show you how in just a few easy steps.
Open your picture in Photoshop. Now select the magic wand tool in the
tools panel. Use this tool to select all of one color in the image. If
you need to select more than one area, hold the shift key down as you
click on the picture. You will see "dancing ants" around the selected
areas. If you click on the wrong area, simply press Ctrl+Z to undo the
last move, or right click and select Subtract From Selection. Once you
have made your selection, right click and select Layer via Copy. This
will create a new layer with just the one color in it.
If you look at the layers panel now you will see two layers. Unclick
the eye icon next to Layer 1 to hide the layer. You should be able to
see just the color you selected left in the image. I am going to
change the name of this layer to the color it contains by double
clicking on the name and replacing the text.
If everything looks right, click the space where the eye icon was
before to make Layer 1 reappear. Follow the steps of selecting a color
and Layering via Copy again until all colors are represented in their
own layers. Each time you select a new color for layering, you will
need to make sure Layer 1 is active. You can tell because that layer
will be highlighted in blue in the layers panel. Layer 1 needs to be
active because this is where all the colors reside originally. If a
different layer is active then when you try to use the magic wand tool
to select a color, it will not work correctly because the color you
are selecting is not present in the active layer.
Colors that have fine detail are a little more complicated than the
other layers. It's a good idea to zoom in when you select small areas
to make sure you don't miss anything. Also, if I use the magic wand to
select small lettering like the TM next to a logo it will probably not
look crisp when screen printed. Instead of selecting this area with
the Magic Wand create a new layer and use the text tool to rewrite TM.
Write TM in black and move the TM to the correct location on the
image. Use a different color than the TM was originally written in so
it is easy to see if the font is the right size, etc.
Now hide all the layers in the layers panel except the TM layer and
the layer that contains the same color as you would like TM to be
printed in. Right click in the layers panel and select Merge Visible.
Both layers are now together in one layer.
You will need to create registration marks now so the layers are easy
to line up when screen printing. Use a thin font like Arial and write
the + sign in black in three corners of the image. Use a font size
that is easy to see but not too thick or it will be hard to line up.
The registration marks need to be far enough away from the image that
they do not interfere with printing, but still close to the picture.
Once you print a few logos you will get a feel for how to create and
place these marks.
Now select one of the layers. In the file menu go to
Image>Adjustments>Levels. The levels options window will pop up.
Under Output Levels: there is a black and white bar with two arrows
underneath. Click on the white arrow and drag it all the way to the
left end of the bar. This will turn the layer black.
Do this with each layer until each layer is black. Now you are ready
to print. You will want to print each color layer separately in black
with the registration marks on each print. Good luck printing!