Contest ResultsNote: This posting has been edited because the original content turned out to be inaccurate. This textile design was in last week's Spoonflower contest (see previous post). The winner, "Lion Design," received nearly 40% of the 1,542 votes. "Wild West" came in second with a little over 34% of the votes. The other abstract design, "Carnival," received about 14% of the votes, and mine came in dead last with nearly 12% of the votes.
From Design to PrintI've been thinking about how the actual fabric looks and how it appears in photos. For example, here's the photo Spoonflower took of my design after they printed it. Some of the colors shifted. I think that resulted in a more subtle vertical striping effect. See the bigger photo in the previous post to see the vertical striping effect.
Spoonflower Colors
Color is a big issue. Our eyes can see more colors than a textile mill can print. Still Spoonflower is able to print thousands of colors. [See Stephen's comments at the end of this posting.]
When I open my original design in IrfanView, it tells me the image has 46,170 colors! I believe, that's due to beginning with a watercolor. Ah, watercolors, anyone can create new colors without trying -- colors that no crayola or paint box will ever contain -- colors that make you ask, "Is it red or purple or orange or something else?" Open that watercolor in IrfanView, make few keystrokes, and you can increase the number of colors exponentially!
Instead, I need to learn how work within the "limitations" of the technology. In my opinion, limitations are the beginning of creativity. This will take some time and perhaps signing up for a Photoshop class -- oh yes, and buying Photoshop(unless I can transfer the lessons learned to my IrfanView software)!
Size Matters
Another issue is the size of the repeat. While it works in the actual fabric, that scale did not show up well on the Spoonflower contest announcement. Last night, I made up my mind to learn how to enlarge my designs on IrfanView. It turned out to be rather simple. I blew it up to two different sizes -- compare the two photos in this posting with the similar image in the previous post. I expected to see a difference but I could not. Can you? Here are the numbers from IrfanView:
- Original design (in previous post): 2.64 x 4.56 inches
- First enlargement (above): 13.59 x 23.97 inches
- Second enlargement (above): 27.78 x 47.96 inches (Rather large, but I have one use in mind that would be grand fun!)
I have yet to address the big issue that must be resolved before my designs make me happy. That is, I need to learn how to remove the visible breaks between the repeats. I hope the Photoshop class can help me resolve this issue.
1 comment:
Stephen from Spoonflower here with a quick correction. While our printers are certainly not capable of reproducing all colors -- no printer is -- they are capable of producing thousands of colors, not just 30! Most textile designs use less than twelve colors because they end up being produced using screen printing. Rotary screen printing requires that a separate screen be created for each color on the fabric. We're lucky in that we're using digital printers that have no limitations on the number of colors. Having said that, the number of colors our printer can reproduce is limited by the pigments we use, and by the fact that the printer uses 8 inks. Some printers use more, some less. The best way to design for digital textile printing is by making sure your colors are in the LAB color space. The biggest disappointments come when people compose designs using RGB colors that don't exist in LAB. Not to geek out too much on the subject, but that's the basic idea. I thought your design printed very nicely! I'll have to send you the quarter yard we printed for the contest.
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