🚀 go-pugleaf

I once worked at a garage type but highly in demand screen print shop that specialized in t-shirts and caps for local events and festivals. They did fabulous work amid the dust, cobwebs and empty bottles of beer among swing turit hand presses.

We had to print a CMYK sep job on white beefy-T's (the best for eyepopping color because of its tight weave). As the prepress production tech/staff designer I had no experience with CMYK-only spot. The shop hadn't either. We could only print 65 lpi halftone screen.

The client supplied a keyline or colored composite showing the hue and density of the inks the seps (film positives) were based on. Our pressman only had inks that said Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black but looked no where near SWOP inks seen in Photoshop and on the composite. They were dark and heavy.

I instructed the pressman to custom mix using dayglo (eyepop-wider gamut) type inks to visually match the composite CMY and Bingo! We got very close to the composite proof, looking a bit closer to printing on newsprint. The client was very satisfied and I learned a quite a bit about CMYK printing.

You might check for their version of CMY hues and the line screens they can print with successfully. Just know it can be done. We did it and we weren't even experts. Just hippy artists.