Photoshop plugin
Index color separation for screen printing, inside Photoshop
What it does
Index separation is not a side module here. It is the whole plugin.
Extract a palette from the artwork, reduce it to the number of screens on your carousel, and split the result into spot channels ready for film. Every pixel becomes one specific ink; the shades in between are built from the density of dots, not from the size of a halftone dot.
Not on sale yet
Get notified at launchEvery separation rests on one number: how much an ink covers on fabric. The plugin keeps a database of your own measurements — your inks, your screens, your press — and uses them instead of guessing. It ships with 68 measured inks so you start with something that already works.
The same ink looks different on a white underbase and straight on dark fabric. The plugin treats those as two entries in the index table while they still share a single screen — so ten screens can carry a dozen-odd shades.
Restrict an ink to a part of the artwork and it will be laid only there — or declare that an area may be built from two chosen inks and nothing else. Lettering comes out solid instead of assembled from the dots of five colors.
The error map shows where the result departs from the original. The texture loss map shows where the artwork flattened out. Both are read against the design, so you fix a separation on screen instead of discovering it on the first shirt.
Before you buy
No tool changes the nature of the method. It is worth knowing where the limits are before you plan the job, not after the screens are burned.
In halftone the dot shrinks and finally disappears, so a gradient dies away smoothly. An index dot is always the same size. A transition between two inks therefore ends abruptly instead of fading, and no setting in any plugin will change that.
Because the dot cannot carry the transition, the missing steps have to be added as inks. A tonal range that halftone covers with one color may need two or three here. Ten screens is a comfortable working number, not a luxury.
Yellow and red will not knit into orange the way they do in halftone — the dots sit side by side and the eye reads both. Colors close in hue, a light blue running into blue, blend without any trouble. Plan the palette knowing which pairs have to meet.
Where the artwork has a long tonal passage — a shadow falling into the fabric — a halftone screen for that one color and index for everything else gives a better result than forcing the whole design through one method.
What the plugin does about it is show you the damage while you can still fix it: the texture loss map marks every place where a transition flattened out, and tells you whether to move an ink or add one.
Free tutorials
Short recordings of actual separations — no slides, no theory. The same design is taken from a flat file to finished channels.
How opacity is measured by eye, why it decides everything downstream, and how to build a database of your own inks.
Coming soonThe full route: extracting colors, reducing to ten screens, the underbase, dark variants, and out to channels.
Coming soonNo underbase this time. Lightening the palette for the fabric, what the red exclamation mark means, and how to get the highlights back.
Coming soonKeeping an ink where it belongs: solid lettering, a highlight built from white alone, and a color kept out of the sky.
Coming soonDocumentation
Thirty-eight pages covering every caption, every button and every number the plugin shows you — including what to do when a separation comes out wrong. Free to read before you buy.
Launching soon
The plugin is finished. The store is not open yet. Leave an address and you will hear from me the day it is — the first customers get the founder price.
Photoshop 24 or newer, Windows and macOS. The license is checked once a week; between checks the plugin works offline. One key covers two computers, and you can move it yourself at any time.