ColorLayers
The palette: ink count, colours, order
The palette is chosen automatically, and it is not final. Any ink can be set by hand, and once it is the program leaves it alone.
The count is asked at the start
On import the program asks how many inks to choose. Answer with your press’s number: a palette larger than one pass is a second pass, a second registration and a second price.
The number is not a sentence. An ink can be added or deleted at any point, and what a deleted one printed is shared out among those that remain.
The auto palette, and pinning
The auto palette fills empty slots with colours from the artwork. The part that matters is the other half of that sentence: it does not touch pinned inks.
An ink pins itself the moment you change its colour by hand. So the order of work is: set the exact colours you actually have on the shelf, and leave the rest of the slots to the program. It will fit everything else around yours without disturbing them.
- Click the swatch. Name, colour, eyedropper, delete.
- Eyedropper. Click the artwork to take a colour from it. Esc cancels.
- The eye. Hides the channel in the preview. It does not affect the export.
- Tone. Gamma, brightness, contrast and strength, separately per ink.
Tolerance decides how much ink you buy
Tolerance is how far a colour may be for an ink to claim it. It is the same idea as Fuzziness in Color Range.
Less tolerance means less ink on the garment: anything that fell outside every ink’s tolerance prints nothing at all, and its share is in the status line. That is not a fault but a lever, and what it controls is how much fabric stays open.
Coverage is your cost
Each ink shows two figures: the area it touches, and the area ink actually lands on once the halftone is accounted for.
The second is the one you spend. A halftone across half the artwork is not half the ink but closer to a quarter, and that is the number you want when you are quoting a job.
Print order and the base
Print order is set by the list, and it carries through to the report and to the names of the film files.
The underbase role can go to any ink, not only a white one. It prints first, and everything above lands on it rather than on the material.
FAQ
Can I keep only my own colours?
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Yes. Set them by hand and they pin themselves. The auto palette will then work only on the empty slots.
What happens if I delete an ink?
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What it printed is redistributed among the rest at the same tolerance. Cmd+Z puts it back.
Why is part of the artwork not printing?
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It fell outside every ink’s tolerance. Raise the tolerance or add an ink: the share that prints nothing is shown in the status line.
