denk

Cant be done. Use photoshop for separation.

Ya can't! LOL. Affinity Photo is in no way whatsoever a Photoshop replacement. I've been experimenting with it myself and Affinity Photo is just for creating artwork or making pictures pretty. It may be possible to separate in layers but in the end you would still need to convert them to channels for printing or sending to an outside RIP. The reviewers are saying "its better than photoshop" or "I replaced photoshop" then when I get it and try it out it is no where near Photoshop. LOL

Thanks. It would be great if there was a persona just for screen printers, just a wild suggestion. Certain functions will be built in like pulling basic colors like yellow, red, dark blue, light blue, green, orange etc. and turning them into channels. Or using the Select Sampled Colour Tool to pull custom colors. Because there are so many variables in screen printing: ink viscosity, ink transparency, mesh count, squeegee pressure, squeegee durometer, stencil thickness etc. it would be best if we can adjust each channels solidity to simulate the printers inks. That way printers can adjust for dot gain. There are tricks in photoshop to make what you see on screen appear close when on a garment without loading a color profile just as long as the channels can be adjusted to what the printers believe it will look on the final product. Theres a lot more to it but thats it for now. In the end people can still design in affinity then move the final artwork to photoshop to do the color separation.

I wanted to experiment and test something. I did a Photoshop color separation then I opened the Photoshop file with Affinity Photo Desktop version. It successfully opened and all channels show up. So it is possible in Affinity Photo to create custom spot colors. The only problem now is how do I preview my channels? How do I turn them on so I can see it on screen how it will print? See attachment.

Well anyway. I wanna see if anybody can do what I did in the pdf file. I’ll check back later. But I’m afraid Affinity Photo is not designed that way.

You have to. Vector based programs can't color separate like raster programs. Unless Affinity Designer can pull colors like a raster program? Screen printing is a totally different beast. It's hard to explain. Just like illustrator and photoshop need to work together. Text in illustrator and if its just simple enough to print on paper then no problem. If it is photographic then it needs to be moved to a raster program. You can't print 4 color process the same way it is on paper. Totally different.

Can anyone explain how to do something like this in Affinity Photo (iPad). See pdf file. In garment printing there is 4 color process, simulated process and index. This here is called simulated process. Need to be able to pull colors from the image. Need to be able to adjust dot gain or simulate it per channel. Need to be able to change color per channel and see it live while picking a color. Need to be able to choose a Pantone color from a Pantone swatch. Need to be able to save with channels so it can be sent to a RIP to make film positives. Sometimes necessary but need to be able to split channels and turn them to grayscale so it can be converted to bitmap halftone for people who don't have RIPS. When converting channels to bitmap halftone there needs to be options to choose dot shape, lines per inch and dot angle. In the future when Affinity Designer (iPad) comes out: Need to be able to move the image from Affinity Photo (iPad) to add vector text or other objects. Need to be able to move from Affinity Designer (iPad) to Affinity Photo (iPad) to color separate. affinity color sep.pdf

I believe there is no resolution to this. Imagine how powerful this would be if we can color separate efficiently in affinity photo for iPad with the pencil. Design on iPad then color separate then send to a rip. Maybe the developers need pictures to better understand what screen printers need. I mean why design on affinity photo then have to move it to photoshop to color separate when it should be done within affinity. Also if and when affinity designer comes out for iPad, even more powerful if we can design in affinity photo then color separate and then drag and drop to affinity designer to add text. Or the other way around, design in affinity designer then move to affinity photo to color separate. I will be posting again on the subject.

Besides Adobe Photoshop as a photo editing program it is also used as a tool to color separate images for screen printing. I can easily pull colors from an rgb, cmyk and grayscale image to make up my final color separation in a rgb file. After pulling colors from the grayscale and cmyk image I just drag and drop the channels to my rgb file. With the color range tool I can pull my yellows and reds from an rgb file. I can pull my light blues, dark blues and greens from a cmyk file. And I can create my white base for dark colored garments from a grayscale file. The final print on the garment comes out pretty close to what I see on screen without changing any color profile in Photoshop. I can assign a color for each channel from the Pantone swatch or I can visually match the actual ink color with a rgb match. To simulate how it will come out on garments I adjust the solidity per channel to give me a good visual of how it will look on a garment. Screen printers who don’t know how to separate colors end up spending hundreds of dollars in separation software. Quikseps, Ultraseps, Screen Print Separator and many others. Affinity Photo on the other hand is very affordable. Right now I can’t seem to find those kinds of features in Affinity Photo, desktop or iPad. And if It is there with color selection tool it’s not very convenient. Maybe you guys can add functions to automatically pull basic colors like yellow, red, light blue, dark blue, green, black etc. Or maybe a screen printing version of Affinity Photo. Or maybe a screen printing mode within Affinity Photo. Just an idea. Even better add a RIP so screen printers can print the separations to their inkjet printers with specialized inkjet film directly from Affinity Photo. Printers spend hundreds of dollars again on RIP’s alone. If you guys can put these simple functions into Affinity Photo I think this will be a good alternative to Adobe Photoshop.