CMYK films,
without a RIP

What you get

Switch the colour mode to CMYK process and the tool makes exactly four films, whatever the artwork:

• Cyan at 20°, magenta at 80°, yellow at 65°, black at 50°. The angles are fixed and sit well apart, which is how four overlapping screens avoid most moiré and rosette trouble. Fixed means you cannot adjust them, and that is on purpose: a safe default beats a knob you have to understand first.
• An elliptical dot. Process work uses an elliptical dot because tones change more smoothly through the midtones than with a round one.
• A conservative ink limit. Neutral greys are carried by the black film (75% grey-component replacement) and the four layers together never add up to more than 240% ink. Four heavy plastisol layers on top of each other cure badly and bridge dots; this keeps them under control.
• The usual extras: registration crosshairs on every film, a label that shows each film’s own angle, and a settings.txt and print-instructions.txt in the ZIP that spell out the angles and the ink limit.

How to switch it on

1. Upload your artwork. The tool separates it into spot inks by itself, as always.
2. Under Inks, set Colour mode to CMYK process.
3. The ink list jumps to the four process inks and the preview becomes a soft proof of the four films together.
4. Check the mesh and the print width, then download. The four films rebuild by themselves whenever you change a setting.

CMYK only applies with the halftone raster on, so it does not combine with the solid mode for lino and block. On the free trial you can switch to CMYK and look at the preview; making the films is a Pro feature.

Choose the mesh with the picture in mind

Four layers of dots need a finer screen than one. On paper, 230 mesh (55 LPI) is the practical starting point and 305 mesh (70 LPI) suits fine editions. On textile, 156 mesh (35 LPI) is the standard and 230 mesh (48 LPI) is for fine detail, but a knit swallows small dots and gains 15 to 35%, so expect process work on fabric to be an interpretation of the picture, not a copy. Use the same mesh for all four screens.

Right after the upload the tool warns you if the picture is too small for the print width, so you find out before you print anything. The mesh to LPI chart explains the numbers.

Spot or CMYK in this tool

What it does not do

• No ICC colour management. The conversion is a plain RGB to CMYK with fixed limits. The preview is an approximation, not a colour-accurate proof.
• No calibration to your shop. A RIP can compensate for the dot gain of your mesh, ink and squeegee per channel. This tool cannot.
• No mixing with spot colours. It is either spot inks or the four process inks in one job.
• No white underbase by itself. On dark fabric, tick Dark shirt? Add white underbase under Films: it makes one extra silhouette film under the four colours.

That is a deliberate limit, not a gap we hide. If you sell photographic prints and need predictable colour, a calibrated RIP is still the right tool. If you want a decent first try, a proof for a customer or a fun photo print without a RIP, this gets you there for the price of Pro.

Test before you commit

Print on scrap, in the same order and with the same emulsion side for every screen, before you use real stock. The print instructions in the ZIP suggest cyan, magenta, yellow, black unless your shop has its own standard order. Look for a rosette or moiré pattern in the midtones and for colours that shift where all four layers meet. If something looks off, the usual fixes are a finer mesh, a lower ink deposit or a smaller print. The moiré blog and the registration blog cover the two things that go wrong most often.

Common questions

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