Printing Color Separation for Screen Printing - Is there a way?

[worldmac1]

Hi Everyone!  I am brand new to the Affinity scene, and have been searching for a way to print color separations with register marks for screen printing.  AI has this and I believe Corel has it for PC too, but I am having trouble locating any info on this for Affinity.

I have looked through these forums, Google, and YouTube, but no luck.

Thank you for any help or direction!

[Lee D]

Ho worldmac1,

Welcome to the forums.

Currently our Affinity apps don't have the options to print colour separations, you'll would need to export to PDF and then use an app like Adobe Acrobat. This feature has been requested and may be added in a future update.

[toltec]

You need to supply a lot more information about what you want. Silk screen printing can be very complex.

First question is, why do you want register marks ?

With litho printing, registration marks are printed outside the page area, then trimmed off. If you did that with a T=shirt you would end up with a handkerchief 

Second question, what type of separations? T-shirt printing is pretty specialised when it comes to printing. Unless you are only printing on white shirts it is very common to print using several spot colours. 

Third question. which Affinity program are you asking about. Designer or Photo?

One answer. Neither Affinity product produces separations, you would normally produce a PDF file or image such as a JPEG and let a professional printer separate it for you. It is possible to set spot colours, which a printer can use.

Why do you want separations, are you printing things yourself? 

 

[worldmac1]

13 hours ago, Lee D said:

Ho worldmac1,

Welcome to the forums.

Currently our Affinity apps don't have the options to print colour separations, you'll would need to export to PDF and then use an app like Adobe Acrobat. This feature has been requested and may be added in a future update.

Thanks for the info Lee!

[worldmac1]

13 hours ago, toltec said:

You need to supply a lot more information about what you want. Silk screen printing can be very complex.

First question is, why do you want register marks ?

With litho printing, registration marks are printed outside the page area, then trimmed off. If you did that with a T=shirt you would end up with a handkerchief 

Second question, what type of separations? T-shirt printing is pretty specialised when it comes to printing. Unless you are only printing on white shirts it is very common to print using several spot colours. 

Third question. which Affinity program are you asking about. Designer or Photo?

One answer. Neither Affinity product produces separations, you would normally produce a PDF file or image such as a JPEG and let a professional printer separate it for you. It is possible to set spot colours, which a printer can use.

Why do you want separations, are you printing things yourself? 

 

I'm printing handkerchiefs... Thats funny how you knew!.. Just kidding.  No the register marks will help me set my screens up, and normally I just tape over the marks. Lee answered my question so I won't need to hunt down a way to do it.  BTW I am using designer. 

Thanks again for all of your help!

[SandyBridge]

This is a really common technique in the screen printing world, and it's great that you're looking into it. Unfortunately, it looks like Affinity doesn't have a built-in feature for creating color separations with register marks.

[SandyBridge]

On 1/11/2023 at 12:53 PM, SandyBridge said:

This is a really common technique in the screen printing world, and it's great that you're looking into it. Unfortunately, it looks like Affinity doesn't have a built-in feature for creating color separations with register marks.

That being said, there are still a few options you might want to consider. One option is to use a different software specifically designed for creating color separations, like Adobe Illustrator or CorelDRAW. Another option is to try using Affinity color separation features in combination with a plugin or add-on that adds support for register marks.

Edited January 13, 2023 by SandyBridge