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Computers and Software => Separation Programs => Topic started by: mimosatexas on March 29, 2014, 04:10:23 PM
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edit: I put this in the wrong subforum because I'm dumb. Can you move it Frog? Thanks!
I am trying out Separation Studio after trying T-seps and Ultraseps and being mostly unimpressed, and so far I REALLY like certain things about it over the photoshop plugins. Specifically the fact that you can quickly and easily create a custom ink palette before opening and sepping your image, then adjust the individual ink colors after the seps have run if needed, so if you have spots that are pantone colors you can sep fades and blends elsewhere using those specific colors (and add others as needed). Pretty great feature, especially for someone like me who is limited to six screens including base and highlight white and black if necessary. In other words, a lot of my jobs are limited to 3 or 4 "colors" and if one or two of those are used as a spot, the other separation softwares fail miserably at adjusting to that limitation and I have to spend a bunch of time testing crap in photoshop and on press.
I want to get as much out of the trial as possible, and had two specific questions right off the bat:
1. Is there a way to adjust the strength of the saturation and desaturation tools beyond the small drop down menu? They seem to have a set strength which works fine on areas with specific concentrations of a color that fit their predefined ranges, but in gradients or complex areas, it fails pretty hard. I can always adjust this in photoshop after the fact, but if I can do it in SS I would like to know how.
2. Can anyone shed some light on the generate black features? I have googled and watched a few videos and read a few tutorials, and these features are mostly glossed over.
Any other tips or tricks that make the software more effective from those of you who use it often are also appreciated. I'm not looking for a one click solution, just a way to save time doing the menial bullshit so I can spend my time masking and adjusting instead of clicking the same buttons and making after the fact adjustments to my palettes. Thanks!
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you can use the tools on the left (lassos, box, that drop of ink looking thing) to selectively saturate and desaturate specific parts of your image... I always forget that they're there, but sometimes they really help.
I too like the fact that you can use any ink pallet...
another cool feature, is setting the 'ground' color (color of shirt)... gildan publishes the pantone colors for their shirts, so you can use the shirt color in the art itself.
on the generate black features, I'd love to hear about better info on how to use them as well... it seems a lot of times, we use the skeletal black image.
I've also been playing around with using sepstudio to do my seperations, and then use discharge ink for each screen to avoid the underbase layer.. depending on the art, sometimes it works really well.
here's one we printed today that was sep'd using sepstudio: 5 screens total...
(http://www.oaknet.com/gallery/var/resizes/Screen-Printing/Samples/IMG_6189.jpg?m=1396119689)
(The blueish tones are intentional and the shirt color (metro blue) was chosen by the customer to pull everything together), came out quite nicely.
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nice print! I understand the drop/saturation tool, but I was wondering if there was a way to adjust it's power. In photoshop for example, I can grab the dodge or burn tool, set it to 5% or 10% and make minor saturation adjustments, but it seems like the strength in SepStudio is always the same. I guess using lasso and adjusting high low percentages with it are probably the best way available if you can't adjust the strength of the brush, or just using photoshop.
Can you explain how you adjust art for discharge using the program? I understand dropping the base white, but do you bump/flatten the top white to compensate when your art contains pastels/light hues?
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In SS the saturation and desaturation brushes gives you the option to target highlights, midtones and shadow areas but.. Here's the thing, because separation is in it's very nature, removing information from an image, there is only so much saturation you can add to the already subtracted info..
If you wish to add back info to a color channel that you feel should not have been assigned to another color channel, then first find the missing info in one of the other color channel, duplicate it, use the eraser tool and remove the info you do not need, then use the apply to channel function to move the modified duplicated channel info to the channel that is missing the info.. Whew..
For example I you think that an area in the red channel should not have been sepd to the yellow channel, then duplicate the yellow, erase the parts you don't need then apply it to the red.. Remember to desaturate the original yellow area where you moved the info from.
Also don't just depend on the visuals to make things optimal.. The vue rite swatches on the right is the heavy lifter of this program.. Use it to view the ink deposit density that will be printed onto the shirt.. You may find yourself desaturating more often than saturating.
The claim is the higher the res of the image the better the image would sep and look.. But not every image that pops tell the story.. Sometimes you may be after a dingy look and a resized 72dpi image will do just fine..
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Nice tip on the duplicate/merge channel option! Thanks for the info on the Vuerite swatches. I had started paying attention to those, and noticed some pretty funky stuff on the default seps it outputs. Interesting info and definitely helpful when cleaning up art. I'm not sure it is worth $900 to me right now, but I can't find another program or plugin that allows the custom palette for less, so it may be my best option when I have the funds. I did a bunch of research yesterday on creating custom multichannel files in photoshop and was shocked at just how weak that are of the program is...
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we use it all the time for 'stuff that doesn't have to be perfect', and honestly, the results normally come out better than I expected... and our customers are usually very impressed too (which is really all that counts)
I'm sure that we've paid for it at least 2x or 3x in what we saved in sending out the separations.
it's not cheap, but it fills a nice niche...
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Nice tip on the duplicate/merge channel option!
Just to be clear merge channel merges one channel to another.
Channel-apply channel copies info from one channel to another.. It takes the lightest or darkest areas of the target channel and copies it over to the destined channel depending on which option you choose in the apply channel...
SimplSeps Raster (for PhotoShop) is what's up... (It's the only plugin that actually has a culture) but that's a rabbit hole you'll have to venture down on your own.. But search the forum for Jeff, Tom, AdvanceArtist, FullSpectrumStudio, SimpleSeps.. Very important videos to support my claim are currently private at the moment on YouTube but once you do your investigation it may be somethir definitely on your radar..
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We do like Separation Studio but still struggling sometimes what to do if the art contains some areas that are clearly spot colors. SS always breaks those down into a certain percentage of white, yellow etc. Well I guess you get what I mean.
And I wish there would be an option for grey scale separations.
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That's when you sample that color in photoshop and use it as a custom color... I love that feature and use it all the time.
Sent from my SCH-I545 using Tapatalk
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That's when you sample that color in photoshop and use it as a custom color... I love that feature and use it all the time.
Sent from my SCH-I545 using Tapatalk
Would you mind going a bit more into detail please on how that process works exactly. Cheers:)
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Rockers understand that SS don't create halftones your rip does that.. It only sets ink density (less or more ink) in the sep channels. If you require a spot channel then it should be reading 100% coverage in that channel..
So create a channel and take the required info from the channels that make up the spot color info and put it in the channel you created. Set the color that you want it to be and saturate it.. You could use the technic I explained in the previous post to move info from one channel to the next.. Remember to clean up the channels you got the info from..
When you save the file remember to print the channel as a spot.
Yuk...
You gotta get comfortable with SimpleSeps it karate kicks Separation Studio in the nuts..
Sent using Tapatalk
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That's when you sample that color in photoshop and use it as a custom color... I love that feature and use it all the time.
Sent from my SCH-I545 using Tapatalk
Would you mind going a bit more into detail please on how that process works exactly. Cheers:)
open your image in photoshop and eyedropper any spot colors and/or any specific ink colors you would like to use in your design. open separation studio and go to Edit>Ink Mapping. On the right side there is a drop down and to the right a button that says New. Click that and name it whatever you want. On the left side at the bottom, click the plus sign. A window will pop up that lets you add a custom color. Do this for all the spot colors or custom colors you want. If you have only one or two custom colors from spots, select them and think about which of the 10 default colors you want to replace with those custom colors, click the little >> button to move the custom color over. If you have a completely custom palette, you can replace all of the colors, or replace two or three or four, then make the remaining colors white or black to limit your palette. Click the Default button in the top right, then click save. Now open you image and it should separate it using the palette you created instead of the default one.
I've only sepped a handful of test images, but this has been INVALUABLE so far. I had a five color image that was all hair colors (basically a bunch of browns and tans), and I was able to sep it with only those tones in seconds. No mess, no fuss, no going through color ranges and masks in photoshop. I tried the same image in Ultraseps and T-seps, which have "earthtone" or "flesh tone" actions, but they failed pretty hard. I'm sure there are ways to make them work, and possibly even to sep to custom channel colors, but it isnt straightforward in the way it is in SepStudio (that I could see).
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Quick question, anyone know how to choke the underbase either in sepstudio, or in photoshop, in a way that only affects the outside edges of areas where overlayed color will meet open shirt? In other words, it preserves all of the halftoned fades within the art, but chokes in a pixel or two around the outsides?
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It will go something like this in PhotoShop- select the base, deselect the areas you don't want modified and then do Edit>stroke- center- how much ever pixels and fill with white..
Ultimately how you use the selection tools to define your selection is what's important.. but Shift/Click adds to a selection Alt/Shift/Click removes from a selection.
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That's when you sample that color in photoshop and use it as a custom color... I love that feature and use it all the time.
Sent from my SCH-I545 using Tapatalk
Would you mind going a bit more into detail please on how that process works exactly. Cheers:)
open your image in photoshop and eyedropper any spot colors and/or any specific ink colors you would like to use in your design. open separation studio and go to Edit>Ink Mapping. On the right side there is a drop down and to the right a button that says New. Click that and name it whatever you want. On the left side at the bottom, click the plus sign. A window will pop up that lets you add a custom color. Do this for all the spot colors or custom colors you want. If you have only one or two custom colors from spots, select them and think about which of the 10 default colors you want to replace with those custom colors, click the little >> button to move the custom color over. If you have a completely custom palette, you can replace all of the colors, or replace two or three or four, then make the remaining colors white or black to limit your palette. Click the Default button in the top right, then click save. Now open you image and it should separate it using the palette you created instead of the default one.
I've only sepped a handful of test images, but this has been INVALUABLE so far. I had a five color image that was all hair colors (basically a bunch of browns and tans), and I was able to sep it with only those tones in seconds. No mess, no fuss, no going through color ranges and masks in photoshop. I tried the same image in Ultraseps and T-seps, which have "earthtone" or "flesh tone" actions, but they failed pretty hard. I'm sure there are ways to make them work, and possibly even to sep to custom channel colors, but it isnt straightforward in the way it is in SepStudio (that I could see).
wow thank you...ill try this today. i use seperation studio exclusively for our sim process work and never knew about this feature. When they'd give me brown or orange artwork, i'd always just open the PSD in photoshop and change those colors to red or green or blue...something it would pick up.
As far as generate black, i always do 'detailed'....havent had any issues to make me try any of the other options. I usually have to downsize my artwork to about 300 dpi 14x14ish for it to work well. ANd on the adjustments, a lot of times on certain designs i merge the gray with the white underbase screen and run that as light gray (on designs where its a muted red, gray and a touch of white highlights)...after i tweak each screen on the slider adjustments they provide per color, i use dodge/burn or levels in photoshop to take it to where i'd like them to be. the "add/subtract" color in sep studio i feel like adds too much or too little...
great advice in this thread!
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Glad I could enlighten a regular user.
Honestly the ink mapping feature is the only real selling point of the software in my opinion. A lot of the rest of it is clunky, especially the saturation tools. The "preview" of the art after adjustments is also pretty unrealistic. It fails pretty hard at showing the interaction between underbase and top colors, but does fine with color interactions. Something like yellow on a black shirt where you want to fade to a darker yellow without another screen isn't well represented. Even with a halftoned base, it will knockout the yellow in an attempt to darken it, instead of relying on the base to darken it, which essentially OVER darkens it by a lot. I guess the underlying issue is the software has no ability to input ink opacity in the way that solidty in photoshop channels attempts to mimic.
Also, unless you art is on a transparent background, the custom palette breaks pretty hard if you try to combine it with a custom ground/shirt color. I tried sepping a design yesterday that was just black, yellow, and white on a red shirt, and it turned the red into a weird tan with yellow and white in it and almost erased the black. The result was weird as hell. The only time I could see this being a problem is when doing grungy stuff where you are creating the art with some of the blend modes in photoshop that rely on the background to knock out white, but I found out you can copy the layers to a new file, flatten, desaturate, invert (if needed) and ctrl click the RGB channel to select out the background without losing information and get full transparency. That step was a revelation for me as I use the blend modes pretty often.
I have been basically using SepStudio to sep into custom channels and make the quick adjustments, which saves a good half hour at least on more complex art and on some of the simpler stuff or for unpicky clients, it does a pretty decent "one click" sep (with some quick channel adjustments) that only has issues you would notice if you knew what to look for. I find I almost always would prefer to open in photoshop for masking to saturate and cleanup, and fix issues with opacity related to the underbase.
For black, I noticed the "detailed" option seemed to be the best on some designs without lots of low opacity detail, and sharper seemed better on those as it pulled more information and gives you more room to adjust the highs and lows within the software.
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Quick question, anyone know how to choke the underbase either in sepstudio, or in photoshop, in a way that only affects the outside edges of areas where overlayed color will meet open shirt? In other words, it preserves all of the halftoned fades within the art, but chokes in a pixel or two around the outsides?
This answer applies more to using Photoshop.
I use two different methods when possible. The possible part is (when I have a layered file and I can treat the type one way and the gradations another. For example, I will take my underbase and adjust curves. Here, I will use an S curve but it's not large and steep. You need a smooth soft transition. The intent is to burn out the highlight (small dots) so that they are tucked under the top ink colors (on fade outs). Then, as you get into the 3/qtr tones and shadow tones, (those are your brighter areas) and you can beef that up to be more solid. For example, I might take my 90% tone and drag it out towards the 80 or so, making sure to leave it in a S curve from highlight to shadow.
For the type or any solid areas, curved don't do much to cut back except trim off some fuzzy edge, but that might not be enough. so, I like to then make a selection of that line art or type and will (CONTRACT) by 2 pixels at 300 ppi. 1 pixels is not enough at 300 in my opinion/experience. The lower the rez, (e.g.) 200ppi, the smaller the contract needs to be (since it's a bigger pixel). For 200 pixels, I contract 1 pixel. For 600 rez, I contract 3-4 pixels. Get it?
For the top whites, I don't do anything with the contract. I let that print over. Of course, tho, I do adjust curved to burn out all other areas that aren't pure bright white except for some pastel like areas.
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open your image in photoshop and eyedropper any spot colors and/or any specific ink colors you would like to use in your design. open separation studio and go to Edit>Ink Mapping. On the right side there is a drop down and to the right a button that says New. Click that and name it whatever you want. On the left side at the bottom, click the plus sign. A window will pop up that lets you add a custom color. Do this for all the spot colors or custom colors you want. If you have only one or two custom colors from spots, select them and think about which of the 10 default colors you want to replace with those custom colors, click the little >> button to move the custom color over. If you have a completely custom palette, you can replace all of the colors, or replace two or three or four, then make the remaining colors white or black to limit your palette. Click the Default button in the top right, then click save. Now open you image and it should separate it using the palette you created instead of the default one.
I just tried this....doesnt seem to be picking up my color at all...i did a brown...its showing up on my color list of seps, but there isn't anything in the image, its just blank on that color
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is it pulling that area into another channel or is it just missing?
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yeah its just missing...it's shown down on the bottom as a channel, but there isn't any data in that screen...not even one pixel
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weird. I haven't had that issue yet. Try a slightly different color, but is still not somewhere else in your design.
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ill keep trying :) I get the gist of it so thats all that matters haha
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You gotta get comfortable with SimpleSeps it karate kicks Separation Studio in the nuts..
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What opinion do you have of what either of them do to Ultraseps? That's what I use. Just curious.
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SimpleSeps may be great, but from what I've seen of the guys selling and supporting it, I think I'd rather steer clear...
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You gotta get comfortable with SimpleSeps it karate kicks Separation Studio in the nuts..
Sent using Tapatalk
What opinion do you have of what either of them do to Ultraseps? That's what I use. Just curious.
SimpleSeps and SeparationStudio both remove the Saturation-white and the Brightness-black from the colors, leaving the pure Hue to work with leaving the white and black screens to regulate the highlights, shadows and midtones of the color.. SimpleSeps gives you the option to sep to adjustme layers allowing you to edit your image non destructively..
In SeparationStudio once the pull is made there is no adding of information back to a channel (you could move info from one channel to the next, quite messy)
SeparationStudio only mixes the 6 primary hues to make up the tertiary colors.. SimpleSeps will allow you to pick your tertiary colors and assign it to a dedicated screen before the pull (manually or automatically)..
SimpleSeps can pull seps in halftones-interlocked(if you please) SeparationStudio pulls in HSB (I think I said that already)
SimpleSeps does halftone grayscale in monotone (b,w,1gray), duotone (b,w,2grays), tritone (b,w,3grays) SeparationStudio pulls in HSB..
SeparationStudio editing tools cannot even stand in the light of PhotoShop's tool set which happens to be SimpleSeps platform..
I do not know UltraSeps but I own QuickSeps Pro.. And from the abbreviated features I gave of SimpleSeps, QuickSeps has no advantages..
You've got UltraSeps and so would be able to compare and decide the advantages of the two programs..
Jeff is a good dude and very committed to his program.. A bit too anal about things being perfect..
Tom is very passionate but keeps a full plate and spreads himself too thin- A visionary..
Both developers try to sell/debate/argue/cuss and fight for the idea of HSB separations.. They sell the logic.. You don't have to buy the plugin because the show you how to do it manually.. I've never seen any other developer going as far as they have gone and I'm sorry a lot of people miss that point..
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All I have seen on multiple forums is them talking down to people like they are the only ones that can understand relatively simple color theory, and people complaining that they don't respond to emails or phone calls related to problems or questions about their software. The condescending attitude is a huge turn off (especially when many of us wholly understand what they are proclaiming as "revolutionary"), as is the lack of support.
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Well we all our point of view..
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All I have seen on multiple forums is them talking down to people like they are the only ones that can understand relatively simple color theory, and people complaining that they don't respond to emails or phone calls related to problems or questions about their software. The condescending attitude is a huge turn off (especially when many of us wholly understand what they are proclaiming as "revolutionary"), as is the lack of support.
Well this is a wonderful post and without talking down lets look at the facts.
Tell me Minos, were you able to identify or discern the very simple color theory problems with Separation Studio during your trail? Is arguing for the truth and scientific fact condescending? If you understood what we have been training relating to color then you would have identified the problems with Separation Studio within seconds of opening the application and loading an image. But you did not convey any such understanding in your posts in this thread.
Lets start with color I will deal with the support accusations next.
So tell me/us what are the simple color theory problems with Separation Studio?
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TOM...updates to SSR?...we want to know....
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Working on that and testing and testing and getting X7 updates in order.. the next round goes beyond the color we already have that nailed but found allot of things in halftones that have never been dealt with and should have been like 10 years ago.
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screw X7, nobody wants that.. ;D....will index seps be in the update to SSR? any manuals or new tuts for ssr?
sorry to derail this thread....
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Yep. :-X
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You gotta get comfortable with SimpleSeps it karate kicks Separation Studio in the nuts..
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What opinion do you have of what either of them do to Ultraseps? That's what I use. Just curious.
SimpleSeps and SeparationStudio both remove the Saturation-white and the Brightness-black from the colors, leaving the pure Hue to work with leaving the white and black screens to regulate the highlights, shadows and midtones of the color.. SimpleSeps gives you the option to sep to adjustme layers allowing you to edit your image non destructively..
In SeparationStudio once the pull is made there is no adding of information back to a channel (you could move info from one channel to the next, quite messy)
SeparationStudio only mixes the 6 primary hues to make up the tertiary colors.. SimpleSeps will allow you to pick your tertiary colors and assign it to a dedicated screen before the pull (manually or automatically)..
SimpleSeps can pull seps in halftones-interlocked(if you please) SeparationStudio pulls in HSB (I think I said that already)
SimpleSeps does halftone grayscale in monotone (b,w,1gray), duotone (b,w,2grays), tritone (b,w,3grays) SeparationStudio pulls in HSB..
SeparationStudio editing tools cannot even stand in the light of PhotoShop's tool set which happens to be SimpleSeps platform..
I do not know UltraSeps but I own QuickSeps Pro.. And from the abbreviated features I gave of SimpleSeps, QuickSeps has no advantages..
You've got UltraSeps and so would be able to compare and decide the advantages of the two programs..
Jeff is a good dude and very committed to his program.. A bit too anal about things being perfect..
Tom is very passionate but keeps a full plate and spreads himself too thin- A visionary..
Both developers try to sell/debate/argue/cuss and fight for the idea of HSB separations.. They sell the logic.. You don't have to buy the plugin because the show you how to do it manually.. I've never seen any other developer going as far as they have gone and I'm sorry a lot of people miss that point..
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My God Star you are have read us like a book. Impressive really.
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Well what are we looking at.. I have no idea I am basically blind in this digital color space. But that is just the begining.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5s1Ga4bC4A&feature=youtu.be (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5s1Ga4bC4A&feature=youtu.be)
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Uuuuggghh...
Not to derail this thread even further, but your posts and that video illustrate exactly what I'm talking about. Not only did you spell my name wrong in your response (i don't care, but it's illustrative of the care and respect with which you seem to always respond to people), but you clearly didn't even read (or understand?:D) any of my posts. I literally said that Separation Studio was clunky and did a poor job of representing color in the post at the top of the last page, so the answer to your question about me understanding its issues would be "yes". You also seem to have missed all the discussion of using custom palettes to compensate for some of those issues. You also seem to have missed how the pointer is essentially always an eyedropper in SepStudio as it shows you the color information in percentages within the palette on the right of the screen in SepStudio, not just as a RGB/CMYK/etc value, which is much more useful on press than knowing its math in a digital colorspace.
I'm not arguing that your software isn't useful or superior in some ways to other options out there, lots of users I respect on this forum use it and seem to think so, but the way you respond to people in basically every thread I've ever seen you participate in makes me less than enthusiastic about giving you money. You always hype yourself and your products while saying the same thing about bringing truth and science to color and imply people don't understand what you're preaching. It's condescending and doesn't further the discussion in any meaningful way. HSB/HWB is not rocket science. It also isn't perfect, which should be clear to anyone with any experience on press. You can't just make a correct dark red by overprinting red on black without understanding so many other variables. Often digital color is simply not that representative of physical color, something discussed at length in this thread you started: http://www.theshirtboard.com/index.php?topic=7804.0 (http://www.theshirtboard.com/index.php?topic=7804.0). The math very often doesn't tell the whole story.
The comment on your lack of support is only something I have witnessed in threads, with your customers requesting tutorials or bug fixes and getting only cryptic replies instead of help, including this one it would seem...
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I will deal with the debatable and personal issues later but let us begin with the fundamentals of color.
(http://advancedtshirts.com/beautifulhue.png)
This is where the rubber hits the road dealing with color. Well with the exception of Brightness and Saturation but in my understanding/opinion the foundation of color gets its traction in the wonderful HUE. If the application or understanding you are working with in anyway destroys, changes or shifts HUE. You will have to spend unneeded to time correct such destruction. We as an Industry tend to eye ball things I did this myself for many years. But now I realize that eye balling color can be compared to letting clients walk into pay bills and just letting them toss some money on the table and saying well that looks like enough.
So what are we looking at in the image above? If you cannot make out the differences just pop it into a standard Graphics app and float your eye dropper around. Which one is not like the other?
What critical color reproduction information has been moved or changed? How will that effect your separations? How might that effect your business?
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Looking at it with something that is more obvious. This is a revealed FULL HUE comparison, one is mathematically correct the other has been severely damaged resulting in color loss. The color destruction can be a bigger issue than you may perceive at first. You see all colors can be separated with 100% accuracy based on Color, Black and White or Hue Saturation and Brightness all of which have numerical values in digital color. If the Color or HUE has be destroyed (moved or changed digitally) you can no longer work with the color accurately with digital color math. This is particularly critical in colors and color ranges that blend. If blends are destroyed there is no way to achieve accurate color separations or reproduction.
Mathematically it is like this 36 - 13 = 23 but what if my shiny $800 calculator turns 13 into 21? BAM the math no longer works correctly. For instance in the left image we can see that a significant percentage of blend from blue to cyan is gone, so that/those mathematic or digital color value(s) have been moved or destroyed. My ability to divide/separate the digital color/digital math accurately has been taken away from me. Further my ability to reproduce the color on a printing press has also been compromised.
(http://www.advancedtshirts.com/carhue.png)
Color and the business of screen printing. If your separation application is not digitally correct or you or your separators understanding of how to work with standard graphics tools pushes you into tools like this application here are some of the ways it might effect your business.
Separations are inaccurate.
Separations take hours and not minutes.
Separations are done with excessive colors 12 or 14 colors when 5 or 7 colors could have printed it as well or better.
12 color print requires 65% more ink per print than a 7 color print reducing profit on the job.
12 color print that could have been a 7 color takes more time to set up and register.
12 color print that could have been a 7 or even a 5 color print reduces the soft hand on the garment.
You bid a 12 color print and your color smart competition bids a 5 color print. You loose the JOB, the CLIENT and the CASH.
Your color smart competition starts to take more and more of your business by undercutting you while they make more profit because they charge more per color but reproduce color better with less colors.
This list could be carried over into other you loose money and clients issues.. but I hope/think we get the point.
I will get into more soon....