Simulate screenprint effects

  • Software: InDesign and Photoshop CS2 or later
  • Project time: 1 hour
  • Skills: Clean up images in Photoshop, convert raster images to bitmap, digitally create a silkscreened aesthetic

A great way to add a screenprint effect to your design work – be it a complex album cover or a simple magazine spread – is to overlay different elements and allow their colours to blend. This technique has been implemented in silk-screening for many years to get the most out of two or three-colour prints, and it’s also effective when applied correctly within a digital environment using an application such as InDesign.

This project will show you how to simulate overprinting within InDesign using raster imagery – and, even better, your own scanned artwork – while being able to change the colour of your artwork on-the-fly. A secondary benefit is that you can have one PSD/TIFF file, but it can be repeated as many times as you want in the document and each one can have a completely different colour, reducing the amount of files required to print.

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