With the increase of digitally printed fabric and wallpapers, you would probably think that there would be less demand for colour separations, however this is not the case. Colour separations are on the increase and as a result we are currently expanding our design studio.
The market leaders in digital printing are doing extremely well and digital printing has rapidly increased over the last couple of years. The reason that certain companies are doing so well is due to the fact that they fully colour separate designs prior to digital printing and in many cases they produce more separations than are initially visible so that effects and textures can be added to replicate traditional techniques.
For example, a design that involves 10 colours would normally be separated in 10 colours and engraved onto 10 rotary or flat screens to be wet printed. However, the same design may be separated differently if it is to be digitally printed. In some cases two or three separations may be created to print one colour, perhaps a base colour or some detail and maybe some textures, tones or some other kind of effect so that the design comes to life and doesn’t look flat and lifeless.
To minimise costs when producing this kind of work, we normally discuss the design before starting the separations and offer a complete price regardless of the amount of colours and this price would normally include any alterations or amendments that may be required. We do try to get the separations the right first time, but this type of work is down to interpretation.
You may be wondering why we actually colour separate the design, why not quickly scan the design, lift off the colours in Photoshop and spend a limited amount of time preparing for print. Well this is what used to happen and that is why digital printing was dismissed for many years, especially by the “top end” markets, as the finished product really did look a cheap alternative to the real thing.
We have been producing quality colour separations for over 40 years now, and our expertise is now being used to produce digital prints on the very latest digital wide format printing machines. The quality is improving month on month and more and more customers who would previously shy away from this method of printing are now embracing the technology.
As digital printing grows we know that colour separation will continue to thrive and the companies who continue to print using files that have been properly colour separated will continue to stand out from the crowd.