ColorLayers
Open the toolTool
ColorLayers splits an image into inks: it works out which ink prints each pixel, brings the count down, halftones the result and checks it. What comes out is a set of print-ready files, without the manual work in curves and channels.
No account needed. Your image never leaves your computer. Preparing, previewing and checking are free, and so is your first export.
Splits the artwork into the inks you named, with a tolerance you control. Deterministic: the same file and the same settings give the same result, every time, on any machine.
A base is added in one action when the job wants one, which means a dark garment. From there it builds itself and is choked by a set amount so it does not show from under the color. On a light garment you simply do not add one.
Overlaps between neighbouring inks are sized from your shop’s profile, for when registration on the press is not perfect. You choose which way they spread.
Line count and dot shape come from the shop profile and apply to every ink. The angles come from the profile’s scheme: the textile default puts every ink at 22.5°. Dots too small to image on the mesh are flagged before output.
Thin lines, gaps too small to hold, isolated dots – everything the mesh will lose, marked on the artwork itself. Every problem says which ink it belongs to.
Films, a preview, an ink map and a report in one archive, in the formats an imagesetter accepts. The report is what makes the archive readable months later.
Separation, halftoning and packaging all happen in your browser, on your machine. The image is never uploaded – only the fact of an export reaches the server, to take it off your balance. That is not a promise in a privacy policy, it is how the program is built: which matters when the work belongs to somebody else’s brand.
colorlayers.site/app
Your browser
PNG, JPEG, WebP, BMP or GIF, dropped into the window. Physical size and resolution are shown straight away, before the first separation runs.
The ink list can be picked for you and then edited. Line count, minimum line and gap are set once – that is your shop’s profile.
Read the problems it found, fix what matters, and take the archive. Re-exporting the same artwork within a day costs nothing.
In: an ordinary raster file. Out: standard film formats rather than a private one – 1-bit TIFF at output resolution, a multi-page TIFF, layered PDF and PSD, a preview, an ink map and a text report.
ColorLayers
in the browser
Preparing, previewing and checking are free. You pay only for exports, and the first one comes with registering: the full archive, no card.
Try it on a real order, without a subscription.
For a shop that outputs films every week.
For a steady flow: a hundred exports a month at the lowest rate each.
Packs do not expire. The subscription can be cancelled at any time. Payments are handled by Creem, a payment provider – card details are never stored here.
Not for the work itself. Separation, halftoning and packaging happen in your browser, on your machine. A connection is needed twice: when you open the app, and when you press Export – that is the moment one export comes off your balance.
A 1-bit film per ink at output resolution, a print preview, an ink map with names, HEX values, angles and line counts, and a text report: print order, shop profile, decisions taken and problems left open. The report is what makes the archive readable months later – the films alone never say which white, or at what angle.
Yes. Re-exporting the same artwork with the same settings within a day costs nothing. It exists for the ordinary case: you export, notice you left PSD unticked, and export again a minute later.
Payments are handled by Creem, a payment provider acting as merchant of record. Card details never pass through ColorLayers and are not stored here – you go to their checkout page and come back with the exports already on your account.
All the preparation – opening artwork, picking inks, previewing, checking for problems – is free and unlimited, however long you spend on it. Only exporting finished films is paid, and the first export after signing up is free as well.
PNG, JPEG, WebP, BMP and GIF. Transparency is respected: fully transparent areas are read as places where no ink prints, rather than as white. Export vector files to raster first, at the resolution you will print at.
Up to 32, the white base among them. The limit that matters in practice is not that number but your press: how many go down in one pass is set in the shop profile. A typical job is two to eight inks plus a white base.
Yes, and on Linux too: it is an ordinary page in a browser and there is nothing to install. You need a current browser and enough memory – a large job expands to several hundred megabytes while it is being halftoned.
Open an image and see the inks it splits into, how much of the sheet each one covers and what it looks like screened. Nothing to install.
Open the toolNo account needed. Your image never leaves your computer.
Prepress engineer and designer
I built ColorLayers because I did not want to spend a whole day splitting an image into inks and putting the bitmap together the way it is usually done. Write to me if you just want to say hello.
