Textile printing system, and plate separation apparatus and method

Abstract

This invention allows both a plateless textile printer that makes process color expression, and a plate textile printer to achieve equivalent color expressions. For this purpose, image data that uses an RGB pallet is converted into YMCK image data using a correction table. An ink-jet textile printer ( ) prints on textile on the basis of the converted image data. On the other hand, the image data that uses the RGB pallet is sent to a plate separation data generation unit ( ), and is separated into binary plate data, the number of which is the same as the number of ink colors of the ink-jet textile printer, using an RGB/ink color tone correction table to realize the same color expression as that of screen textile printing. In this case, a plate data file name to be generated, the resolution of a plate to be output, the number of repetitions of an original design of plate data to be output in the horizontal direction, and the number of repetitions of the original design of the plate data to be output in the vertical direction are respectively input to boxes ( ) on a dialog. Also, an input conversion file, an output conversion file, a tone curve file used by retouch software, an original image resolution, an enlargement/reduction method, an ink table file, an output data type, and a repetition method are respectively selected using pull-down menus ( ) of the dialog. Using these parameters, a film plotter ( ) prints images in units of plates (colors) on lith films, and the printed lith films are set in an exposure machine ( ) to undergo exposure, thus obtaining all plates. Using the obtained plates, a screen textile printer ( ) prints on textile using the same inks as those of the ink-jet textile printer.