What is colour separation?
Colour separation splits your artwork into one layer per ink colour — each layer becomes its own screen and its own pass on the press. A three-colour logo is three separations, three screens, three setups.
Why it matters
It determines the screen count, and the screen count determines the setup cost and per-piece price of a screen-printed job. Simplifying artwork from five colours to three is a real saving.
On our floor
Separations are prepared in-house from your vector artwork. We will suggest merging near-identical colours where it saves you a screen without changing the look.
Common questions
- What file do you need for separations?
- Vector artwork — AI, EPS, SVG or PDF — with colours as separate, named swatches ideally.
- Can you separate a JPEG?
- We can redraw it as vector as part of the job, which is what makes it separable.
- Does a gradient need separating?
- A gradient becomes a halftone within one colour's separation.
- Are separations kept for reorders?
- Yes — artwork and separations stay on file; a reorder needs only new screen exposure.
Related terms
screen printing
Screen printing pushes ink through a fine mesh screen stencilled with your artwork, one screen and one pass per colour. Setup is per…
halftone
A halftone breaks a continuous tone — a gradient, a shadow, a photograph — into dots of varying size so that one ink colour can appear…
Pantone TCX
Pantone TCX is the Pantone system for textiles: colours defined on dyed cotton swatches rather than printed paper, so they represent what a…
Where this applies
Book a call
Twenty minutes with the people who make it — the garment, the quantity, the date.
Put it to work
Send us what you have — a garment, a logo, a rough quantity — for a quote within a working day, or book a call and we will talk it through.
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