From: Murals & Illustrations / Specific to: Digital Artist / Freelance Illustrator
Preparing an Illustration in Procreate or Photoshop for Riso Printing
As I am learning how to set up files for Risograph printing, I thought I would share the journey with you and how I got my drawings ready.
I will also leave the comments section open at the bottom of this page for people to ask questions or add additional advice.
Below, I will try to explain a few things about preparing for Risograph printing:
- How a Risograph printer works with a number of files
- Preparing your working file with Procreate (can use Photoshop too)
- Exporting files for the Riso printer
I will be focusing on explaining how to prepare your files from digital drawings using Procreate and Photoshop. If you are doing pencil/pen and paper drawings, then some of this can be applied to what you are doing once you scan your files digitally.
There are a few things to be aware of to get your head around how the riso printer works and how you need to prepare your artwork to be printed.
Hopefully, I can help explain the process as I work my way through it.
First, let’s do a brief explanation of how Risograph printers work.
Quick Explanation of How a Risograph Printer Works
Riso printers read greyscale values only. Riso printers use black/greyscale to determine how much ink to print. 100% Black will print the colour in full, 85% black/grey will use 85% of colour opacity, and 60% black/grey will use 60% of colour opacity.
If you are familiar with screen printing, where each colour is printed using a silkscreen, then the same concept applies to a riso printer.
A Risograph printer only prints individual colours separately; for example, a two-colour riso print will use two separate “screens”. One for the yellow “screen” and then the blue “screen”.
From those two colour screens, by overlapping the two colours, you can create a third colour, being yellow + blue = green. There is also the ability to set the opacity, allowing for a range of tones.
Each colour needs to have its own file to be printed. So when drawing, you need to be able to draw all the blue on its own layer and yellow on another layer in Procreate or Photoshop. These need to be drawn in black / greyscale, but I will show you how to set up your file so you can see the colour version and how it will look and blend with overlap and opacity.
Brain Tweaking Bit – Converting Colours to Grey Scale
This bit tweaked my head a little, as each of those colour layers needs to be converted to greyscale before exporting. But I was doing this the long/wrong way and found a better way to set up your working file. I am using Procreate; the same can be done in Photoshop.
Preparing your working file with Procreate
Let’s show this with a video.
Exporting files for the Riso printer
As mentioned before, each colour needs to be exported as its own file. You can export as a .png file or check with your Riso printer for advice. Using .png keeps the transparency around your drawing from each layer.
You then export each of those layers as its own file, eg blue.png and yellow.png. Using colour reference helps to identify the colour to use when printing, as each file will be black/greyscale. It is a good idea to also provide the printer with a colour reference of the final image too.
Also view this website for advanced Risograph print setup tips.
check with your Risograph printer
I would also recommend talking with the printer you decide to go with how they prefer/need the files prepared for print.
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