Manual Color Separations: How We Turn Full-Color Art Into Rad Screen Prints

When most people see a full-color print on a T-shirt, they don’t think about what it took to get it there. They just see a cool piece of art on fabric. But in our shop here in Oklahoma City, especially when we’re creating high-detail merch for local brands and businesses, the real magic happens before the ink ever hits the press.

I’m talking about manual color separations, the hands-on, old-school method we use in Photoshop to break down beautiful artwork into individual plates. It’s one of the reasons people come to us when they want the highest-quality screen printing.

Why We Do Manual Seps Instead of Auto-Seps

Automatic separations are fine for ripping the art apart really fast, and honestly, those channels can be a useful tool, but computers don’t understand art. Software doesn’t know when a highlight needs to glow or when a shadow needs to stay soft. It just crunches numbers. Only an experienced separation artist knows how those seps are going to translate on the press, bumping colors up or down, dialing in highlights, pushing shadows, getting the art to fall right off the shirt when it needs to, etc. You can’t get those details from auto seps. You just can’t.

Manual seps let us shape every tone by hand, which is why our full-color prints have depth and life that automatic tools just can’t recreate.

When it comes to longevity, high quality, and wearable artwork, nothing beats old school screen printing. The feel, the look, the richness of real ink… it’s just on another level.

The Big Idea: Tear It Apart to Build It Back Up

We take your art, photography, illustration, paintings, whatever you’ve got, and we do something wylde!

It’s not just a technique, it’s a craft.

And it’s how you get those rad, high-end prints everyone notices.

Channels Are Where the Magic Happens

Each Photoshop channel becomes a single ink on press:

• A clean under-base

• Colors that mix

• Highlights

• And black ink for contrast when needed

This is where the screen printing starts to feel three-dimensional.

When the screens drop:

• Colors blend naturally

• Details stay crisp

• Gradients stay alive

• And the art keeps its original energy

Why This Matters for Your Merch

If you’re chasing:

• High-end Graphics

• Detailed art

• Realistic portraits

• Gradient-heavy illustrations

• True full-color art

…manual separations are the key to getting that look.

This is the backbone of our Oklahoma City screen printing services and why our clients will stick with us once they see the difference.

If you want legit tees, you want ink. You want screens. You want separations done by a pro.