Startup Idea: Color Separation Software for Screen Printing

Startup idea to develop an independent, affordable software solution for color separation in screen printing. The solution should not be reliant on expensive third-party software, rather it could integrate with free platforms like GIMP. This would drastically ease the process of creating multi-colored images for printouts in businesses like t-shirt printing.

I am a small time screen printer. Basically I print custom t-shirts for people for businesses, events, what have you. Being a small time business owner one of the harder apps to find, is one that will effectively separate colors for me to print shirts out.

Most of the ones out there are basically just macros for photoshop and not an actual program that will separate colors and make it easier to print out shirts.

To elaborate, when you print a shirt for a client, and it has several colors. Let's use Mario as an example. You need to seperate each color from the image before you print, because each color has its own screen and print out. So say Mario has 5 colors, I need 5 different images printed out for me to accurately transfer that image onto a shirt, bag, hat, ect.

The ones that are out now are exceedingly expensive and essentially just plugins for photoshop. Which make it both economically and make no sense for something that relies on another program. A good example of this is one of them called SimpleSeps. It costs $300 for a plugin for CoralDraw. So not only do you need to pay $300 for the plugin, but you need to buy CoralDraw as well.

If there was a program that could separate colors, not be reliant on another program, or if it is, be reliable on a free one like gimp, and was affordable, that would be great for a lot of start ups and veterans alike. Yes. Color separation programs is the main thing to search for. Right now I solve this by manually doing it myself in photoshop.

Thank you and I hope I helped!

Submitter: Sure. Ian and my email is (view contact info).