I am new to screenprinting and was wondering what color seperation software do most use and is there any programs that do automatic color seperation? and what software do you guys use to print half tones with epson printers?

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I personally like a combination of adobe photoshop and adobe illustrator. Gives you the best of both worlds, raster and vector software. I always color separate by hand and afraid I cant give you any opinions on automatic color seps, sorry.

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It depends what type of graphic you are printing, but I use either photoshop or illustrator.

In photoshop there is a posterization function
image>adjustments>posterize

it allows you to break color images down into the ammount of colors you specify. This is one way


In Illustrator CS2 they introduced a new feature called "live trace" in which a raster image can be transfered into a vector based image and you can specify the ammount of colors used.

Hopefully this helped holler back if you want a more indepth how-to.

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PhotoShop, Illustrator or CorelDraw are all good programs to render your artwork in. Seperating your colors with an Epson printer will call for a program called "RIP". It will cost you a pretty penny, upwards up to $1000, so be ready for that.
If you can get hold of a post-script-laser printer, you will only need the software to do your artwork. The laser printer will do the seps for you in the proper half-tones or solids to do whatever your printing.
On top of the "RIP" software, you will need the special inks for the printer and the films, so it might be a good idea to check out several supply companies. Compare the different prices of Ink-Jet printing vs. Post-Script Laser printing.

Good luck............

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