How to make complicated photo into 4 colors

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Post September 22nd, 2007, 10:24 pm

K my logo is pretty ilaborate (spell check) on colors and fine details, is there a feature or way to make my logo into the 4 (MAIN) most used colors in the logo? I can only do 4 color screen printing for my shirts and its pretty much impossible to do it by hand, is there a way to just tell photoshop to change it into the 4 main colors in the design?
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Post September 22nd, 2007, 10:24 pm

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Post September 23rd, 2007, 5:43 am

Not sure if you can do it using Photoshop. There might be a piece of software out there that could do this, but surely it's pretty easy to see from the eye?

Is it possible to upload a copy of the logo here. If i have time i could give you an idea on what i think are the main colours or at least the best colours to go for from the logo.
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Post September 23rd, 2007, 1:17 pm

Never dealt with screen printing but 4 color printing uses the colors Cyan, Yellow, Magenta and Black (a.k.a. CMYK). Convert your logo in Photoshop or AI or whatever program you use from RGB to CMYK and you should be fine. Double check with your printer service first and also confirm the format you should save your logo in. Some printers prefer .eps where others prefer .pdf. I know this is the case for Print Magazine printing. Not sure about t-shirts. Should be the same.

From here
http://webstyleguide.com/graphics/screen-print.html

Quote:
Regarding color reproduction, four-color printed images are separated into four subtractive printing colors (cyan, magenta, yellow, and black). These four inks combined produce the illusion of a full range of colors on the printed page, but ultimately the typical magazine or textbook image is composed of only four colors. By comparison, as mentioned, current computer monitors can display millions of colors, producing a richness of color that easily rivals the best quality color printing.


Regardless print magazines require CMYK. I can't see how screen printing is any different.
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Post September 23rd, 2007, 6:03 pm

Yes, you can do that. Look for "posterize" under edit, I believe.
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Post October 11th, 2007, 11:10 am

A quick and free workaround for this that I've done in the past is to just open up your logo in Paint and re-save it as filetype 16 color bitmap. You should be able to narrow it down to four colors from there pretty easily with the bucket tool.

Of course, some logos just might not simplify down without rethinking the original design a little.
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Post October 15th, 2007, 5:14 am

Or you can change the colour mode to indexed colour and use the main colours as your selections ... I did it a long time ago, so I'm not sure how well it will work though ...
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