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Artist => General Art Discussions => Topic started by: 59Graphix on May 24, 2013, 02:22:13 PM
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I have one simple question. Maybe someone can set me straight.
Seems like the more artwork I do for other companies and individuals, the more I hear "we only print with vector art" Really?
I just sent out a CorelDraw x6 file to a client and it had a monochrome bitmap as part of the art. It was a simple overlay that distressed a section of the design. I get it back saying that they can't print that way or if they do there will be a substantial up-charge.
I don't get it. If you print a Corel file, does it matter? It was all spot color. Designed for a one color print. As long as there are no transparencies or need for halftones, shouldn't this not be an issue?
Enlighten me.
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They just don't know what they are doing.
There's alot of that going around.
;)
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I see this a good bit also. Often printers who don't get involved in (how the art is done) or what can be achieved in various art files and only have a vector program to output film, they (assume) that all art MUST be vector as in it originated from vector. So placing bitmaps in the file simply scares them. They think, they don't know how to handle that so YOU give them art they are familiar with.
I have many Corel customers that don't have photoshop. They get a little afraid of it at first but then see how smoothly it flows.
I have a few customer that don't have any experience at using the programs other than clicking print. Thats all they want to know.
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For us we say vector only because as soon as you say "ya, I can take that .tiff" the next order is sent as a 1"x1" .tiff and they want a 14" x 14" print. Their response is - "Well last time you took it."
It sounds like you know well enough what you are doing, but 99.999999999999999% of people don't. It is much easier to make a policy - vector only, and stick to it. That way you don't end up on a Friday with someone that sent over this "wicked cool artwork I got off google images" which ends up being a 9 color and awesome quality at 1.5" x 1.5" and 12dpi.....
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For us we say vector only because as soon as you say "ya, I can take that .tiff" the next order is sent as a 1"x1" .tiff and they want a 14" x 14" print. Their response is - "Well last time you took it."
It sounds like you know well enough what you are doing, but 99.999999999999999% of people don't. It is much easier to make a policy - vector only, and stick to it. That way you don't end up on a Friday with someone that sent over this "wicked cool artwork I got off google images" which ends up being a 9 color and awesome quality at 1.5" x 1.5" and 12dpi.....
Exactly.
From people that know what they are doing, we will print all kinds of files. But the general public if you say hey I can print a JPG, your gonna get something horrible and you will spend more time chasing them for a good file or time remaking it...
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I have one simple question. Maybe someone can set me straight.
Seems like the more artwork I do for other companies and individuals, the more I hear "we only print with vector art" Really?
I just sent out a CorelDraw x6 file to a client and it had a monochrome bitmap as part of the art. It was a simple overlay that distressed a section of the design. I get it back saying that they can't print that way or if they do there will be a substantial up-charge.
I don't get it. If you print a Corel file, does it matter? It was all spot color. Designed for a one color print. As long as there are no transparencies or need for halftones, shouldn't this not be an issue?
Enlighten me.
Is it just a coincidence you are asking this even tho on the T Shirt forum there is a big argument going on about this topic and you are involved? Just curious?
The argument going on over there is lame because everyone is basing their opinion on incomplete information. You in particular are quick to call shops and certain printers either lazy or incompetent.
The original poster with this question in that thread does not completely explain what she is sending her printer period. There is no reason for anyone to make judgement based on just what she is saying, we don't know if she is sending logo types but in extreme low resolution and major anti aliasing. We don't know if she is sending high res crisp logos in raster who really knows? I have been receiving logos for well over a decade and more times than not people think the crappy 72dpi web pulled graphic is print ready.
That lady is just complaining about art charges, well tough for her we as printers do not work for free. Even high res rasters require time to separate and prep for film and that cost has to be passed on to the customer. The right customers do send print ready art work but most business/school/walk/organization/on and on customers do not know the first thing about screen printing and the graphic requirements.
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simple answer, they don't know how, and let's be kind, they don't know how yet... I had a vendor tell me they couldn't use a bitmap tif once; I told him to open the file and print it out of his laser printer..."Oh wow, I didn't know that..." It's not even like it's a hard thing to do.
Steve
That's why this group is here I think, to teach and share. The knowledge shared here is priceless, really.
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I follow and agree with what you're saying. On the other hand, the original poster is saying, he did some art (for a printer) and the printer says he only prints vector art.
So 59 is referring to the printer (his art customer) saying he only wants to handle art from him that is vector. No bitmap or raster files and not as a customer walking in the door.
I certainly see both your points tho. We sometimes just think it's odd that someone who does this fora living and must take art files for all sorts of customer...doesn't print out bitmap images EVER.
To many artist, It's like saying, you only print on 100% cotton tees and never anything else.
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Just find it odd he is involved with someone else's thread pertaining to this exact question then he pops the question as his own here.
Just a bit fishy IMHO
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I just had this happen to me. I'm on a board of directors with some other volunteers and we have this big conference coming up and needed t-shirts. Art was designed by another member (a medical illustrator, not a t-shirt artist) before I joined the board, but since I have t-shirt experience, I offered to help, since the printer kept asking for vector art. (Original art was PSD).
I sepped it into channels and sent it, because after I went to their website and saw examples of sim-process and CMYK printing, I knew they could handle it, contrary to what they were asking for. I explained to them who I was and what I do and only then I got the truth that they could print channel-sepped PSD.
Now, the artist who did the original art knew vector from raster, and high from low-res, yet still didn't know that the art needed to be a certain size and sepped into spot colors with a base print, etc. Even after I sepped and sent it, because the source file was slightly low-res, they kept asking for "vector" instead of a higher-resolution file. Luckily, the art represents cave paintings, so jagged edges and sharp lines aren't an issue, (the text part was high-res) but if it were anything else, it would've needed to be re-done.
It was a combination of laziness and frustration with dealing with past crap files on the part of the printer, and procedural ignorance of screen printing on the part of the artist, herself a seasoned and very skilled digital illustrator.
I sure hope the shirts turned out okay. I find out in a couple of days.
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Just find it odd he is involved with someone else's thread pertaining to this exact question then he pops the question as his own here.
Just a bit fishy IMHO
Just so happens that this actually did happen to me just this morning. And I came to this forum, and have been following it for quite while now, because the conversation seemed to be a little more professional and not so down your throat when a question is asked. Be it controversial or not.
And since you find it odd that I was in someone else's thread talking about the same thing, well that's what these forums are for. Or am I missing something. See, I probably didn't get and answer there, so, like I stated above, I came hear in hopes of an answer or just some good conversation about a topic I was curious about.
It's unfortunate that we, as a society are so quick to judge and when something is simple or innocent, we have to try so hard to find something wrong and complain about it.
I will simply ignore your remarks and take it in stride, as I do with long lines, freeway gridlock and a few other things that annoy me but don't get the best of me.
As for anyone who I offended by coming to this forum, sorry, however I will still ask questions on more than one forum and if they overlap, oh well.
As for Dan and the rest of you all, I thank you for your input and for the most part, have made perfect sense. Being on the design end and not as much on the output end, I didn't recognize the picture you have all painted. I now have more respect for those on the receiving end and in the future I can respond to them with more accurate delivery of my art files.
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My two cents.
In general, one is safe accepting vector art. Raster opens up a whole new world of possibilities, even more so with the growing number of low tech owners of high tech devices.
As for the OP's printer client. no offense to T-Shirt forums, but if a member there, they do have more than their share of plywood pressed, jury-rigging, duct tape using, bedroom and garage printers who are often less than current on the state of the industry.
They usually do come around though, and one does have to start somewhere.
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All good post.
You gotta get to know Inkmans personality to love him. ;) He's really a good guy.
He means no harm. His teeth just naturally grow that long and can occasionally poke the skin when he's just trying to get to know you. :). I get testy myself some days. Like family, we take the god days with the bad.
My son for example is not a morning person. He can be a grumpy son of a gun.
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Hey Dan, I can appreciate all that! Like you had told me before, I am trying to be civil and let it ride but it's almost like a fraternity or gang at these forums. You have to get jumped in before your accepted! LOL!
But seriously, I do appreciate all the knowledge here and I will offer my 2 cents, accepted or not, every once in awhile.
As Frog said about the other forum, I am laughing.
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Ha. Had to laugh, but yeah, sometimes, it can feel like that. We are a band of brothers and sisters. :)
We let new people in tho (if you can pass our hazing). ;)
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Great post, I get art from our local college and boy they are something else, great great art but are hard to sep without tearing them all apart to redo. I think the biggest problem with art is size and colors, I might get art that has the right amount of colors but way to small to up size without a mess, and then I might get art that is sized right but way to many blended colors for what they are paying for or my press can hold...how many of you print 10 to 14 color prints daily?.
Darryl
Ps Would you really expect off the street customers to have vector art, i have very few customers who know what vector means...I also think it's a disservice when shop takes a customers crappy art and give them a nice looking shirt without telling them about all the work they had to do or not charge for it, so the next printer they go to gets the, "the other guy did it with no problem" then again might be a way to keep a customer coming back on there part as long as they are giving away free service.
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Ya know, after reading Darryl's post, it reminded me that much of todays vector art coming from these young artist and design houses make use of tons of "vector" art but all in all, end up being what amounts to a raster file anyways. So many gradient meshes etc. used with rgb colors and cmyk etc.
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My two cents.
In general, one is safe accepting vector art. Raster opens up a whole new world of possibilities, even more so with the growing number of low tech owners of high tech devices.
As for the OP's printer client. no offense to T-Shirt forums, but if a member there, they do have more than their share of plywood pressed, jury-rigging, duct tape using, bedroom and garage printers who are often less than current on the state of the industry.
They usually do come around though, and one does have to start somewhere.
Not a fan of kludging either, but I almost can't believe the last part. You don't use duct tape?
Ha, speaking of TSF did a little smackinrachnids this morning. I don't think that guy's ever going to come around... ;D
As far as the actual topic goes, I like reasonably laid out art.
A crappy traced vector is a vector--what if it has thousands of stray nodes? Or as Dan mentions--the kid that has a huge catalog, and all they do is drop in random crazy elements, overlapping everything without cleaning anything up? Either way, it's vector, but it sucks.
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I obviously didn't see the file in question, but it seems their only complaint was a bitmap overlay.
I would hence assume that they use spot color output from a vector program.
Perhaps they don't understand manual seps, or any modification of art is not included in the cost.
Did you assign a pantone or other value to the monochrome?
I did a whole bunch of sticker designs for this guy many moons ago.
I actually talked to the owner of the printshop, where they would be printed.
CMYK? Yes we do that. What LPI? 150. So you'd like 300dpi at scale,cmyk? Yes.
So I do my usual cartoon style, but use the airbrush liberally in the shades and blend department.
Line art is retained and tight.
I believe the shop is using offset? I did see them exposing plates on a quick tour.
( kinda rusty on other print method terms )
The 'kids' working pre-production just went ahead and did vector redraws...since..I guess that's all they know.
Kinda dumbed everything down, but whatever, I guess, since I was already paid.
???
And of course, as all have mentioned, this goes the other way too.
Garbage in, but expecting spectacular results for no $$$.
I deal with that EVERY SINGLE DAY, so yeah.
Most printers can come across jaded, but we've earned it.
Cheers.
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A crappy traced vector is a vector--what if it has thousands of stray nodes? Or as Dan mentions--the kid that has a huge catalog, and all they do is drop in random crazy elements, overlapping everything without cleaning anything up? Either way, it's vector, but it sucks.
I'll take a napkin drawing over one of those vectors anytime.
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For us we say vector only because as soon as you say "ya, I can take that .tiff" the next order is sent as a 1"x1" .tiff and they want a 14" x 14" print. Their response is - "Well last time you took it."
It sounds like you know well enough what you are doing, but 99.999999999999999% of people don't. It is much easier to make a policy - vector only, and stick to it. That way you don't end up on a Friday with someone that sent over this "wicked cool artwork I got off google images" which ends up being a 9 color and awesome quality at 1.5" x 1.5" and 12dpi.....
Exactly.
From people that know what they are doing, we will print all kinds of files. But the general public if you say hey I can print a JPG, your gonna get something horrible and you will spend more time chasing them for a good file or time remaking it...
I do the same.... because most people don't understand why we have to charge them for art work when all we have to do is, scan the logo off their business card and print it. >:(
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We take every kind of file out there. If it is usable we will use it. If it needs cleaned up we charge for it. If it needs redrawn we charge for it.
The biggest thing we do is explain all this up front. A good customer is an educated customer. We lay it out as clearly as possible. If the customer does not understand we explain it so that they do. You have to show why your time is worth the cost. I just ask them if they would be willing to work for free. 99.9% of their answers is no, so I then ask why should I? If they still do not get it I kindly show them the door.
For the shops that only take vector art that is too bad. You are limiting yourself on what you can print. I have one of those by me. He also will not print halftones above 35 LPI. One of the other printers wont even print halftones. When the customer walks in and sees Sim Process prints and Index prints on the walls they are blown away after dealing with one of those guys. That works out great for me. The charges do not seem to matter anymore.
I know some will say well you are going to lose business being that way. They are right. We are losing the business we do not want...... ;)
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Did you assign a pantone or other value to the monochrome?
The only color was black and white. We made it to work on any color shirt. And yes they were both 100% pantone hex black and 100% trans white. The monochrome was also hex black 100%.
We will try to accommodate all our clients with artwork whether it's from a business card, a napkin or the bottom of their shoe but as said by JBlue, they must be told up front of the possible outcome.
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Ok, so we're back on topic here.
I'm just trying to figure out what you may or may not have done wrong in the file.
Communication is not always what it should be.
(and God help you if you rely on proprietary renditions within one version of one brand of software )
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Ok, so we're back on topic here.
I'm just trying to figure out what you may or may not have done wrong in the file.
Communication is not always what it should be.
(and God help you if you rely on proprietary renditions within one version of one brand of software )
Basically they want all vector. Period. Or they up charge to print the bitmap. I don't think there is a wrong for what I did. It's just not how they accept files. Everyone has there terms and conditions.
Can you elaborate on what you mean by "rely on proprietary renditions within one version of a brand of software"
I believe I can read through this but maybe your on to something here. ....the floor is yours...
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Basically they want all vector. Period. Or they up charge to print the bitmap. I don't think there is a wrong for what I did. It's just not how they accept files. Everyone has there terms and conditions.
I would wonder what else they don't know, if handling raster images is somehow a problem. Maybe find a more knowledgeable printer? Or teach them that it's no big deal to learn to use them?
Steve
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I don't understand any of this.. we get art requests from the customer.. We draw it out on paper, get approval.. take it to the camera room and shoot it to size on film.. Then we use that film to hand cut separations or if we are lucky it is one color so we take that film.. put it on our screen.. Put a peice of foam under the screen and a piece of glass over the top and take it out in the parking lot and let the sun develop it.. what is all this crap about vector or raster? words I did not know were related to what we do?
dlac
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They just don't know what they are doing.
There's alot of that going around.
;)
That's very much the case in our shop. We have only outputted from Illustrator. I know it can be done from PS and others... but we just don't have the experience and we don't have the knowledge on how to do it right.
We recently had a job using this image generator online... we went to the link they provided inputted all the information they wanted (one of those word cloud things)... generated the largest image it would allow... then we auto traced it. LOL
I KNOW it could have come out of PS easily, but just didn't know HOW (it was only two color). Then we had a job that didn't happen but it had mostly vector, but some textures done via MASK and such. We didn't know how to handle that. I was going to have to sub out that art to Dan because of that simple lack of knowledge/skill (and lack of time to learn in this case). With rush fees the client opted not to do it, or took it somewhere else... which is fine since it was down to the last 10 mins to order the shirts and have them in the next day and the qty kept decreasing. Turning into a PITA type of job... anyway... lesson was still learned that we have some glaring gaps in our art skills for screen printing. :(
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I'm a tusche only shop. :P
…then we auto traced it. LOL
>:( >:( >:( Auto tracing can't even get straight lines right.
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I'm a tusche only shop. :P
…then we auto traced it. LOL
>:( >:( >:( Auto tracing can't even get straight lines right.
Works well enough with high rez black and white text clouds. :)
Sorry for the fuzzy picture.
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I'm a tusche only shop. :P
…then we auto traced it. LOL
>:( >:( >:( Auto tracing can't even get straight lines right.
How do you manage without the glue? ;)
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The glue is important, but it's the stencil not the image/positive.
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Can you elaborate on what you mean by "rely on proprietary renditions within one version of a brand of software"
Corel and Adobe ( and likely others ) have some features within their software that allow you to do 'fancy' stuff on your vector art.
Problem being, these effects should be rasterized at scale before sending the file out, as they rely on the specific program
to render the effect properly. Heck, even thickened outlines don't always translate properly between formats.
It's nowhere near as bad as it used to be, but it's still something to keep in mind.
Maybe 10% of all art jobs that land on my desk have a 'proper' vector file, and those are just a simple logo with text.
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Thanks for all the interesting posts! I think everyone that has a clue (at least in this forum!LOL Just kidding) don't need to the art to be just vector. Monochromes and vector, when designed and separated properly work hand in hand. Almost transparent if you will. I liked the explaination that as Chadwick explained, files from other programs can get really jacked when importing. No matter what file type or program you use. I'm sure the separator guys (i.e. Dan...) have some tricks to fixing this. I have taken so called "vector" art and rasterized it just so it would print properly.
I guess the moral to the story is: " Vector, Schmector, do what you know, learn what you can and print some cool stuff!"
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So..do any of you see a trend?
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I have one simple question. Maybe someone can set me straight.
Seems like the more artwork I do for other companies and individuals, the more I hear "we only print with vector art" Really?
I just sent out a CorelDraw x6 file to a client and it had a monochrome bitmap as part of the art. It was a simple overlay that distressed a section of the design. I get it back saying that they can't print that way or if they do there will be a substantial up-charge.
I don't get it. If you print a Corel file, does it matter? It was all spot color. Designed for a one color print. As long as there are no transparencies or need for halftones, shouldn't this not be an issue?
Enlighten me.
There is a mountain of ignorance in the graphics world relating to pixels and color. So huge is this mountain that while every other form of printing has mathematical based solutions that are dead on only we screen printers have this special class of separators.. and even they are way off the mark. I have found this to be the biggest problem in this Industry. We are trying to correct it but hitting massive resistance.
For example I have been working with a very high end artist recently one of his limitations is the separator that does the seps for the high end shop. Imagine that the artist constrained by the separation requirements. And the separator makes more money than the artist.
Billions of dollars have been lost or wasted because of this ignorance even I as a real artist for some 20 years tried to steer around pixels with vector.. NOT ANY MORE!
The Separation Show 2 Simulted Process Color Separations Channels VS Layers (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-TANOw3F8k#)
And these things go really deep and there are really easy solutions and I am not talking about plugins.