There are several reasons for separating a file: You might want to separate a design into individual layers to recolour it easily and create multiple colourways. You might also have to separate your design if you want to use analogue printing techniques such as screen print or rotary print: Analogue printing requires printing the design in layers and accommodating for the different technical requirements of each printing technique. AVA Quick Separations enables you to separate your design into individual layers, adjust your separation as needed and finally colour it.

To download a copy of this lesson plan click Education lesson plans - separations & colouring.pdf

Creating flat separations

A flat design is a design with no overprinting areas that contains 100% of tone or none at all.

There are two different separation methods for flat design, depending on whether your design is completely flat or has a small amount of tonal information in it.

Auto with Create

1. Open your design in AVA and count the number of colours that you can see. In this example we have 7 colours, including the background. As this is an automatic separation, make sure to always count the background colour as well.
2. Activate your image layer and go to Auto with Create.
3. In the opening window, type in the number of layers you would like to create and choose Separation Mode: For Flat Art Work.
   
4. Click on OK to separate your design.
5. You can now make one layer after the other visible by holding down the ⌥ (option key) when clicking on the eye of each layer in your layer palette.
   

Automatic

Automatic is perfect for designs that have a little bit of tonal information but are designed to be flat. Again, this technique is for non-overprinting designs and will give us perfectly aligned layers.

1. Open your design in AVA.
2. Select your Pipette Tool in your Tools Palette. Hold down (shift key) and (command key), you will notice that the icon of your pipette changes.
3. Holding down both keys and click on the darkest, most saturated area of your chosen colour. This will automatically create a new layer in your Layers Palette. 
   
4. Keep pipetting more layers with the (shift key) and (command key) held down until you've added all the colours that your design consists of.
   
5. Activate all your layers and make only the image layer visible. 
6. Go to Separate > Automatic.
7. In the bottom left corner of your screen, click on the little plus to create two views. 
   
8. At the bottom left corner of each window, a small dot indicates which view is active.
9. Click in the left view and make only the original image visible. Click in the right view and make only your separated layers visible. This way you can compare the two.

Cleaning Automatic separations

As our design had slight tonal information, you will find that certain areas of your separation will need cleaning. The next couple of steps are brilliant to tidy a separation but can also be used for adjusting mask layers.

1. Activate your spot layers and go to Layer > Filter Browser.
2. If you haven't used the Filter Browser before, it will display completely empty. 
   
3. Click on the plus icon in your Filter Browser to add a new Filter Set.
4. In the dropdown menu select the Despeckle Filter.
   
5. Use the slider bar of the filter to remove more and more pixels. Zoom into an area of your design with finer details to make sure that you are not losing information.

The Mover Tool

Even after using the Despeckle Filter, you might find some pixels that you'd prefer to move to another layer of your separation. To do this, you can use the Mover Tool.

1. Make one layer after the visible to identify areas that you would like to clean further.
   
2. Go to Window > Mover to open your Mover Tool window.
3. Activate all yours layers in your Layer Palette.
4. At the bottom of your Mover Tool window, there is a small dot. Using this dot, you can resize the window to add presets.
   
5. Tick under From the layer from which you would like to move information.
6. Tick under To the layer to which you would like to move the information (in this case, we want to move the dark purple area to our black layer). 
   
7. Select the Filled Freedrawn Shape Tool and draw around the areas of your design that you would like to move. Continue with this process until you have a clean separation.

Creating tonal separations

There are multiple different ways in AVA to separate and edit tonal designs. In this handout we will be focusing on two of the most powerful tools, Advanced Colour and Combine to Layer, as well as one very easy option for creating quick colourways - Automatic separation with dither. 

Automatic separation with dither

This separation technique automatically separates flat artwork to manually created 1 bit layers but adds dither. It is fantastic for quickly separating tonal designs, and allowing users to make rapid colourways.

1. Open your design file in AVA.
2. Have a look at your design and identify the different colours in your design
3. Use the Pipette Tool in your Tools Palette while holding down the (shift key) and (command key) to pipette the colours. This will automatically create a new layer in the desired layer colour. Make sure to get a good variation of tones, and make sure to also pick the background colour and any white in your design.
   
4. Make the image visible but not active and the layers you are separating to active.
5. Separate Menu : Automatic. Make sure that Add Dither is ticked and the Error Diffusion Percentage is around 80%
   
6. View your separation, you will see from 100% zoom scale it looks tonal, however if you zoom in you will see the file has been separated flat. This is perfect for creating quick colourways before completing a full tonal separation
   

Advanced Colour

Advanced Colour will enable you to separate overprinting, tonal designs.

1. Open your design file in AVA.
2. Have a look at your design and identify the most important colours of your design. These will be colours that can't be achieved by overprinting other hues. In this design there are following main colours:
   Black
   Dark purple 
   Mid purple 
   Pale pink 
   Dark green 
   Bright green 
   Yellow
   
3. Don't worry if you miss a colour in the beginning. With Advanced Colour you can add any missed colours easily at any point.
4. Use the Pipette Tool in your Tools Palette while holding down the (shift key) and (command key) to pipette the identified main colours. This will automatically create a new layer in the desired layer colour.
5. Make sure that your original image is visible and that your spot layers are active. Go to your Separate Menu > Advanced Colour.
   
6. In the opening window, click on Make to create the separation.
7. Once you have clicked on Make, you will see that small icons have been added to your layer chips. This means that you have created preview separation layers that can now be edited.
8. Create a second window by clicking on the plus at the bottom left of your screen. 
9. On the left make your original design visible and on the right your separated layers to compare the two.
   
10. Now make one layer after the other active and visible. For example, let's have a look at our dark purple layer: 
    We want to make sure that the strongest area of this colour in our original is identical to the one in our separation. In this case, it is, so the separation is in the right place!
11. If we are lacking coverage, move the slider towards the left to add more info to your separation.
    
12. If you move the slider towards the right, you can reduce the coverage of the active layer.
13. You can further adjust the tonal movement of your layer by using the small Gamma Pane in your separation window. In this case, our black was not strong enough, so we added a point to our gamma and dragged it to the top:
    

        14. If you are missing a colour, make your original image visible again and while holding down the ⌥ (option key) and (shift key), pipette the colour that you are missing. In this case, we are missing a pale green:

        15. Once you have added the layer to your Layer Palette, go back to your Advanced Colour Window and click on Make. This will separate the new colour.

         16. If you have pipetted the wrong colour initially you will notice that the tonal movement of your layer is not right. In this case, you can hold down the ⌥ (option key) to adjust the colour within your Advanced Colour Window.

        17. Keep adjusting the separation using these steps until you are happy. At this stage, activate all your layers and click on Fix Layer in your Advanced Colour Window.

Combine to Layer

Combine to Layer is an incredibly useful tool to combine layers but also to control the overprint between layers. This is particularly important when separating designs for production. 

1. To combine two layers together, activate the darker one of the two. In this case, we are wanting to combine layer 7 & 8. As layer 7 is darker, we will put the pencil next to layer 7.
2. Go to Separate > Combine to Layer to open your Combine to Layer Window.
3. Add 100 in the cell of the corresponding colour (which is the colour of the selected layer in the layer palette).
   
4. Click on Make at the bottom of your Combine to Layer Window. A small icon will appear on your active layer.
   
5. Make the layer that you want to delete later (in our case layer 8) invisible and start moving the slider of the corresponding colour in the Combine to Layer Window to the right. This will add information from this layer to the active layer. As the layer you want to delete is lighter, you will only want to move a certain percentage until you get the right tonal effect.
   
6. Once you are happy, click on Fix Layer. 
7. You can now activate the layer that you

   moved information from and delete it.
   

Controlling areas of overprint - Dodge & Burn

As mentioned above, if you had any areas of overprint that you would like to reduce, you can use Combine to Layer but also Dodge and Burn or the Gamma Window.

1. In your Tools Palette, select the Dodge Tool. This will lighten areas of your selected layer.
   
2. In our example, we have too much bright green overprint in certain yellow areas. This means, we have to activate the bright green layer and use the Dodge Tool to reduce the tones in this area. 
3. As the tones that we would like to reduce are midtones, select as range Midtones. By adjusting the exposure, you will edit the strength of the effect.
   
4. On the edges of the some areas, our light pink is not strong enough. To help with this we can change our Dodge Tool to Burn and start painting to strengthen the tonal information of the bright green layer in this area.
   

Controlling areas of overprint - Gamma

Another way of controlling the overprint and tonal information between layers is to use the Gamma Tool:

1. Go to your Edit Menu > Gamma to open the Gamma Window. Activate the layer that you would like to edit.
2. Add a point to your Gamma and start adjusting the tonal information of your layer. In our example, we are opening up the separation to make it less solid. 
3. Tick and untick Preview to see the difference between your adjustments and the previous version of your layer.
   
4. At the end, click on Do Gamma at the bottom left of your Gamma Window. 
5. Using Dodge and Burn and Gamma, keep adjusting your separation until you are happy and ready to start colouring.

Colouring in the design window

There is no limit to the number of colour variations you can add to your file! In this section of the handout we will show you how you can add colourways and different options for you to colour your layers:

1. Open your separated design in AVA. At the top of your Layer Palette, click on the small plus to add a new colourway. This will create a duplicate of the currently visible colourway.
   
2. In your new colourway, hold down ⌥ (option key) to bring up the AVA Multiview Picker. You can now start to adjust the colours of your new colourway.
   
3. Click on the plus in your Layer Palette again, to create a third colourway. If you want, you can split the view of your window by clicking twice on the small plus in the bottom left of your design window to view the three colourways at the same time.
   

If you click on the number of your colourway, the Colourway Chooser will open:

• In there you can see all your colourways. If you click on the Eye to highlight it, you can hover over a colourway to display it.
  
• If you activate the lock at the bottom of your Colourway Chooser, you can click on the lock above the colourway to lock it. This way no further colour adjustments can be made to the layers.