On November 9, Adobe (you know…. the guys who make Photoshop and Illustrator), announced a new – and very unpopular – upgrade policy. As any Photoshop or Illustrator user knows, you could be back a couple of versions in the past and still get a discounted price on an upgrade to the latest and greatest version.

Well folks….. the party is over. Adobe has gone full circle and become a little too arrogant. First, starting in version CS5, they removed the beloved “Screen” button that thousands of us used every day to set the halftone frequency, angle and dot shape. It has force a LOT of users to stay on CS4 just so we have this feature. Adobe’s response…. “people should not print that type of stuff from Photoshop – they should use Illustrator.” Duh! A LOT of us do Simulated Process and CMYK separations IN Photoshop and we want to press the “Print” button and walk away.

Now, they just announced that they would no longer let you be a few versions down to upgrade. If you want to upgrade to their “soon-to-be-released” version CS6.0 in early 2012, you MUST have already upgraded to CS5 or CS5.5 to get an upgrade price. If not, you will pay the full $699! Holy “magic wand tool” Batman! For a company that just walked away from Flash and is laying off 750 workers to “realign” things it sure seems like the wrong time to piss off hundreds of thousands of users. Read their recent layoff news at Reuters here.

All you have to do is type a search of “Adobe Pricing” and you will find all the message boards ablaze with unhappy users who think Adobe has gone too far. But hey, they grossed just over $1 billion last year. What the heck. The ARE the 1000 pound gorilla.

Click here to read the Adobe Featured Blogs post from November 9 that started all of this.

Here are the paragraphs from the post that sums it up:

“We are excited to announce that membership to the Adobe Creative Cloud will be available in the first half of 2012 at a price of $49.99 per month for individuals and $69.99 per month per seat for workgroups, both for an annual plan. Our move to this membership model allows us to keep our customers up to date with the latest Adobe innovations in our tools and related services. Creative Cloud will provide maximum flexibility, offer lower cost of entry, and add cutting-edge innovation on an on-going basis to keep our customers ahead of the changing technology and device landscape.

For customers who prefer to remain on the current licensing model, we will continue to offer our individual point products and Adobe Creative Suite editions as perpetual licenses. With regards to upgrades, we are changing our policy for perpetual license customers. In order to qualify for upgrade pricing when CS6 releases, customers will need to be on the latest version of our software (either CS5 or CS5.5 editions). If our customers are not yet on those versions, we’re offering a 20% discount through December 31, 2011 which will qualify them for upgrade pricing when we release CS6.”

In other words – get your checkbooks out and upgrade by December 31 or pay the full price afterwards.

An Open Letter to Adobe
A guy who has made a great living off of Adobe is Scott Kelby. He is the editor-in-chief of Photoshop User Magazine, the president of NAPP – National Association of Photoshop Professionals and owner of Kelby Training.

He also has a blog at www.ScottKelby.com and wrote an EXCELLENT and LONG “Open Letter to Adobe” that you must read. He pleads “our” cause and has some good advice for Adobe. I doubt they will listen but who knows.

Read Scott’s letter by clicking on the graphic below.

By Scott Fresener. Fespa is on the move again and in early 2012 they will once again have their huge Fespa Digital show along with a smaller show-within-a-show called Fespa Fabric in Barcelona Spain, February 21 – 24, 2012! Wow. Tapas on Las Ramblas. Nothing finer!

They have again asked me to present a seminar program called Textile Talk and to do a few video interviews from the show floor. As with past shows I am offering a variety of speakers covering both screen printing and direct-to-garment topics like I have done at Fespa Hamburg, Fespa Mexico City and Fespa Munich.

Read more about Textile Talk here.

On November 9, President Obama signed what might be called the “Anti-Trinkets and Trash Bill” as part of a bill to cut government wasteful spending. Wow. Regardless of your political leanings, this one hits home at our industry. No one can argue that the governments wastes billions of dollars but when you single out promotional products including items like printed T-Shirts – that is like a stab to the heart.

Here is an excerpt from the WhiteHouse.gov website:
WASHINGTON, DC – This morning, President Obama will sign an Executive Order that will cut waste and promote more efficient spending across the federal government.  With this Order, the President is directing agencies to reduce spending on travel; limit the number of information technology devices (e.g. cell phones, smartphones, tablets, laptops) that can be issued to individual employees; stop unnecessarily printing documents that can be posted online; shrink the executive fleet of the federal government; and stop using taxpayer dollars to buy swag — the plaques, clothing, and other unnecessary promotional items that agencies purchase. Overall spending in the areas covered by the Executive Order will be reduced by 20 percent, saving billions.

Of course there was a huge outcry from the Advertising Specialty Institute.

Read their Industry Response here on Tim Andrews Blog.

Also, there is a great response titled Obama Attacks Fed Promo Product Spend - with action items at Tim’s Blog here.

Here is an excerpt:
We’re calling on everyone to reach out to their senators and congressmen – they need to hear from each of us, collectively and individually. I am sending a letter directly to President Obama. Below are talking points you might consider in a letter to the editor of your local paper and to your senator or your representative.

• The promo products industry helps create jobs. The industry employs nearly 500,000 people throughout North America and includes thousands of small and women- and minority-owned businesses.
• Promotional products, which cost just half a penny per impression, beat out prime-time TV, radio and print advertising as the most cost-effective advertising medium available, meaning even smaller companies can pack the advertising punch of multimillion-dollar companies. ASI studies show 83% of ad specialty recipients in the U.S. say they can identify the advertiser on a promotional item they own.
• As more companies shift to lower-cost advertising like promo products, it’s helping the industry bounce back. A recent ASI Q3 industry survey found sales rose for the 7th straight quarter.
• Promo products save taxpayers money. The U.S. government used promotional items as reminders to mail back the U.S. census – instead of sending government representatives door-to-door – a move that may have saved taxpayers up to $85 million. The ensuing response rate surpassed that of the 2000 census.
• Obama himself knows promo products work – he relied heavily on them to get elected in 2008, and his reelection website today offers everything from logoed T-shirts to leather bracelets, bumper stickers, buttons and beyond.

We will follow this story as it unfolds.

A huge congratulations to industry member, Tom Rauen, of EnvisionTees.com in Dubuque, Iowa for beating the Guinness Book of World Records for the most T-Shirts worn. Tom did this amazing feat at the Diamond Jo Casino in Dubuque, on November 11 by wearing 247 shirts!

With an official Guinness Book of World Records judge present Rauen beat the world record by two t-shirts. The current record was set last year by Croatian. Rauen’s supporters say he was wearing just about every shirt size possible.

While this seems like a “simple” feat, according to Rauen it takes practice on how to put that many shirts on and the largest size they used was a 20 X.  My question is….. where do you get a 20X shirt?

Tom got a ton of publicity around the country on this feat. Great job!  But, how do you get all those shirts off AND it would appear from the videos and pictures that you could strangle yourself doing this. The other question is how much do all these shirts weigh? Tom is not a huge guy.

All $5,000 dollars raised during the event will go to the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation.

Here are some videos that ran on local and national news.

I have been a member of the Academy of Screen Print Technology since 1995 and each year we induct new members from around the world at our annual dinner/business meeting at the SGIA Show. This year we had a great meeting at the Marriott hotel in New Orleans on Wednesday, October 19. There were about 30 members in attendance and as usual, there were a lot of foreign members who could not make it. In the past we have had casual meetings at international shows like FESPA so the foreign members could get a chance to say hi.

This year we inducted three very worthy new members who just happen to be good friends. They are:

Ad Versteeg – Evident – Netherlands

James Ortolani – Hix Corp. USA

Johnny Shell – SGIA USA

Congratulations to our new new members!

The Academy also sponsors the Student Awards Competition as part of the Golden Images and we choose the Best In Show awards from the Graphics and the Garment Gold Winners. See a list of all the winners here.

Click here to learn more about the Academy. (The group photo from this years meeting has not been posted yet.)

SGIA has its annual Expo last week in New Orleans. Scott Fresener was there roving the isles and talking with friends and customers. There are number of short videos below. Check them out. Watch for a complete show report with show footage no later than Sunday night, September 23.

While the show did not seem as packed as previous shows, key exhibitors were reporting that traffic was light but BUYERS were there. People were spending money. It seems the show brought in quality attendees which is what every exhibitor prays for. We heard there was a lot of order writing. Congrats to SGIA for another great event.

SGIA Show Reports and Interviews
Simply click on the ones you want to see.

Scott Fresener interviews Peter Choi at SGIA 2011

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Scott Fresener interviews Peter Choi at SGIA 2011

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See the new Rapid Tag printer for shirt labels, small sleeve prints and more. This thing is fast.

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Scott Fresener SGIA 2011 Final Show Review

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Scott Fresener reports from the SGIA Expo 2011 in New Orleans and talks about the quality of the show, a show overview, new products and more. www.T-BizNetwork.com

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SGIA 2011 First Day show report with Scott Fresener

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3:03

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Check out what's going on at SGIA 2011 in New Orleans

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Scott Fresener third day SGIA show report

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Quick update on the third day of SGIA 2011. To learn more see the Final Show Report. www.T-BizNetwork.com

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Scott Fresener interviews Richard Greaves at SGIA 2011

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Learn a little history and watch a short interview with industry Pioneer - Richard Greaves. Richard was responsible for a lot of the early R&D on process printing, screen making, color separations and more. He has given thousands of seminars around the world.

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Scott Fresener talks with printer Kleo Blue at SGIA 2011

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3:14

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Kleo and his brother own Faux Pas printing and Scott has been doing a lot of separations for them.

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Scott Fresener interviews David Landesman from Lawson

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See their direct-to-garment printer and their new direct-to-screen machine.

**

Some days I feel like a hairdresser. I know much more than I should. Over the years I have had the great pleasure of seeing a LOT of great shirt images of famous people, places, and things that came from FastFilms and now T-Seps. If you look at some of the samples on the T-Seps home page you see major movies, Disney images and much more. This is just the tip of the iceberg. These are just samples that printers sent me (getting samples is like pulling teeth). What you don’t see are the hundreds of thousands of images that have been done.  In fact you can read a few testimonials from happy users here.

In fact I tried to think of how many separations have been done with FastFilms and T-Seps and there is just no way to know. A huge printer in the UK (can’t name names), has done at least 3,000 separations with FastFilms. Last year in Munich at Fespa a user came by the booth and left a catalog with at least 500 printed shirt images in it and said “all done with FastFilms” (he upgraded to T-Seps). FastFilms was released in 1999 and with at least 9,000 users of both programs my guess is the answer is easily hundreds of thousands of separations from a “simple” little Photoshop plugin.

Just to give a taste, in the last two weeks I have looked at images from T-Seps users for Hootie and the Blowfish, the racetrack Saratoga, Toy Story 3, Captain Morgan Rum, a great image for the comeback tour for Mickey Gilley, an F35 airplane image for Lockheed, Duck and Turkey stamp images for the state of Arkansas and more. That is just images people have sent me. Why do I see these? In many cases it is a brag from customers. “Hey… look what we are doing?” In other cases it is to simply get the masters touch and see what routine I might run and what tweaks I might do.

Why don’t I show more of these? Simple. My customers don’t want the world to know that they are using T-Seps or FastFilms and in many cases they are just a contract printer for someone else who has the rights to show the image. Mums the word. I am usually told “don’t pass this around” when I get these images.

In fact, I know how my program works so well that my wife gets sick of me going into Walmart, Target or airport gift shops looking at shirts saying “T-Seps, T-Seps, T-Seps.”

But – at the end of the day it brings a huge smile to my face knowing that I had a hand in helping printers look great. After all, their customer has no idea who Scott Fresener is or what T-Seps or FastFilms is. They just know that someone performed magic on a T-Shirt!

Read a few testimonials from happy users here. Check out T-Seps here.

Happy printing,
Scott Fresener

This article was promoted by yet another call from a new T-Seps user (large company) faced with the same old “we can’t print that” comment from the screen and production departments. Over the years I have had this call and conversation THOUSANDS of times. True. It comes from the fact that in the every day world of garment screen printing, many shops NEVER do high-end work and rarely have to expose a halftone dot. And, if they do have to burn halftones it is probably something simple that still works if they don’t hold anything lower than a 20% dot. Plus, a lot of printers print white ink through a 110 mesh and are convinced they can’t get white to go through anything higher – let alone a 230 (90cm) mesh!

If you plan to do any high-end printing on light or dark shirts – regardless of who’s color separation program you use – you need to read this article and force your screen makers and production people to read it. And, when they tell you it is BS you need to tell them to “just do it.”  I have often used stronger words over the years. Yes, there are certainly variables and each job seems to have a life of it’s own. But, for most jobs you can take the following information as “the word.”

Quick Tips for Successful High-End Printing
Printing Simulated Process Color, CMYK and Index Color on light and dark shirts can be very rewarding and also very frustrating. If you have never done this type of printing you might be shocked at the high mesh counts and type of ink used. If you normally print spot color and heavy athletic printing this will be MUCH DIFFERENT. In order to have great results with T-Seps/FastFilms or color separations provided by us you may need to change your thinking on how you print and make screens. It is important to try to follow these guidelines.

The first reaction screen makers and printers have when presented with their first high-end job is “we can’t do this.” The truth is if you go to www.T-Seps.com and look at the handful of sample images, they are ALL done using the following techniques. Hundreds of thousands of shirt jobs have been printed using these methods. This is NOT the same as general logo/spot color printing and it requires an open mind. The truth is that printers and screen makers just need to buy into how the world of high-end printing is done and be open to new ideas that on the surface appear impossible.

Color Separations
You can pay to have an experience color separator do the seps or you can use a program like T-Seps or FastFilms. These programs have been used for over 10 years by most of the world’s largest printers. The following directions are the same exact specifications found in the Manual for those programs.

If you own T-Seps or FastFilms why would you need to use an experience separator? The truth is I do separations all day long for large and small companies. Large companies doing work for NASCAR, Disney, Harley and others often have a season rush and get behind. I do their overflow. Most printers who do this type of work use FastFilms or T-Seps. Smaller printers with these programs often get complex jobs where they want to really shine. And, some printers don’t do enough high-end work so they are not always as familiar with the tweaks needs for critical jobs. For a flat fee of $50 it is sometimes easier to have the seps done outside to save the hassle.

Film Output
When trying to expose very fine halftone dots you must have a film positive that is dense black in the image areas. That means vellum many not be the best choice for critical work. Many printers still use a laser printer with vellum and if that is all you have then you will just have to work hard to hold the small halftone dots.

You can get excellent and dense black film output from imagesetters or from inexpensive inkjet printers using a software RIP like T-RIP (raster image processor) that tells the inkjet printer to lay down more ink. One of the secrets to printing photorealistic images is HOLD THE DOTS on the film and on the screen. If you lose halftone dots then the image on the shirt will not look like the image on the computer. Halftone dots on vellum or laser acetate are not very dense and the exposure light burns through the fine dots.

The proper halftone screen angle is also important and may seem unorthodox to the untrained printer. For Simulated Process Color (not CMYK), use 25 degrees, elliptical dots for ALL COLORS. Trust me.

For real CMYK prints use the angles of C 15, M 45, Y and K 75. Again, trust me.

For most general high-end jobs use a line count/frequency of 55lpi. If you run automatic presses and have critical jobs you can go to 65lpi and even 75 lpi. If you are using vellum or laser acetate then drop down to 45lpi.

If the job is Index Color (no halftone) the art department MUST have the job at the final print size and around 200dpi resolution before they separate it. The resolution will be the size of the small square pixels/dots and these will be VERY SMALL on the films and a typical screen maker comment is “we can’t burn that.” Read the following….

Screen Making
All screens should be properly tensioned. At best, use retensionable or rigid aluminum screens that have a tension of 25 – 30 Newtons. If you have wood frames, use the tightest ones you have. Yes, these images will work with wood, but you will lose some detail and may not have as good an Underbase. Don’t let your lack of the best frames stop you. Just work to use tight screens that are on stable frames.

The proper mesh count is critical. For most photorealistic jobs use a 230 mesh (90cm) for the underbase (go lower if the design has a lot of solid bright colors), and a 305 mesh (120cm) for the top colors. The first reaction is “I can’t get my white ink through a 230 mesh.” Not true. If you use a small amount of curable reducer and reduce the viscosity of the white so it is creamy it will work. You are NOT trying to lay down a rock solid white layer of thick plastisol for an underbase. The highlight white (last color down) will make the white pop where you need the pop.

When ordering screens try to get the 230 mesh screen for white ink with a thicker thread diameter. This will help make the stencil thicker and give you a better deposit of white.

Proper stencil preparation is critical and goes along with HOLD THOSE DOTS. If you have never exposed high mesh screens you need to forget what you know about exposure. Your exposure times for 305 mesh will be 20% of that for your 156 mesh. You MUST use direct emulsion. You must use thin coats of emulsion (1 coat on outside/bottom, 1 coat on inside). If necessary come back after you dry the screen and give it another coat on the outside. And, use the sharp edge of the scoop coater.

The best emulsion to use is a dual-cure (two part) emulsion. It has more latitude and is more forgiving that one part photopolymer emulsions which have a very fast exposure time.

The way to tell if you can hold the small 5% dots is to do test screens. Have the art department create a test film with squares filled with 2%, 5%, 10%, 20%, etc., halftone dots. That way you are not guessing at what size a dot is. Coat and expose the screen. Work hard to expose the 5% dot. Yes, it can be done. You will probably not be able to hold the 2% dot. That means if there are very subtle design changes these might be in the 2% to 5% area. Great screen makers do it all the time. The secret is keep reducing your exposure times. If you are using a pure photopolymer emulsion (one part), you might find times as low as 10 seconds!

For most non-critical cartoon or freeform graphic images it may not really matter if you don’t hold anything below a 10% dot.
If the job is Index Color then all the dots on the films are the same size. If you can burn one of them you can burn them all.

Inks
Simulated Process jobs are normally printed with a good high-opacity white for the underbase and highlight whte, and standard off-the-shelf plastisols for the top colors. Most colors are fairly creamy in the container but the white can often be very stiff. To get the white to print better simply add a small amount of curable reducer to the ink. Many brands recommend “soft hand” and this can work but a liquid reducer is better. It may seem counter intuitive to reduce white ink to get better opacity but the truth is when it is very thick it requires much more pressure on the squeegee which drives the ink into the shirt. By reducing the ink it clears out of the screen easier and lays ontop of the shirt.

If the job is Process Color CMYK, you must use special inks. You need the colors of Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black. These inks are very thin and transparent. They work well on light shirts but tend to mute down if printed on a base of white. That is why they are rarely used on black shirts. Some companies offer “triple strength” process plastisol with a heavier pigment load. If you must print CMYK on an underbase on dark shirts, consider using triple strength.

Printing Technique
Use medium-hard squeegees that are sharp. Triple durometers are better (70/90/70).

For the underbase try to do one good stroke. If necessary a second stroke may help coverage. You may need to slow down the stroke to get the ink to clear. Try to hold the fine detail in the image. You ARE NOT really looking for the white to jump off the shirt. This is the job of the Highlight white! Flash cure after the Underbase. This is the most critical print. If the underbase looks good as a black and white image then everything else should look good.

If the job has a lot of solid spot colors you may have to print the underbase through a lower mesh count and in some extreme cases print the base, flash cure, print the base again, flash and then print the colors. This more important when doing athletic type photorealistic images where the final feel/hand of the print is not important.

Since the underbase is through a high mesh, it will flash cure very quickly. You can place the flash cure unit 1 to 2 inches above the print and often get a skin cure in five to ten seconds.

The colors are printed wet-on-wet ontop of the underbase white. If they are smooth and creamy on a high mesh you should be able to do one clean stroke. Some jobs with a lot of colors may need an additional flash part way through the print order.

DO NOT PANIC until the last color is printed. Often, it is the Highlight that brings it all together. It brightens areas and lightens other colors. If printing a second white last in the sequence seems totally wrong, just give it a chance. This is often the magic that makes the print pop off the shirt.

For CMYK Process jobs, you must use a very consistent squeegee stroke. If you do too many strokes or “mash” the ink through the mesh, you dots will gain too much and the print will be muddy.

General Suggestions
If a design does not look like the original art, modify an ink color and try different color sequences. This is normal when printing on dark shirts. It generally takes more than one shirt for an image to settle in and print correctly. There are many variables that affect the final print, from screen tension to quality of the printing press, and technique of the printer or machine. Adjustments at the screen press are commonly performed by high-end printers.

Print on a good shirt. DO NOT use a test square – other than for lining up the screens. The print needs to have the absorbency of the shirt AND the tighter the knit the better. 100% cotton is obviously better than a 50/50 Cotton/Polyester blend because of the dye migration from the shirt.

If you are printing on fleece or a polo shirt with a rough texture you will need to lower your line count and accept the fact that the print will not be as clean as on a T-Shirt.

Be Positive
Having done thousands of separations and sold thousands of copies of T-Seps and FastFilms, I know that some customers will simply not agree with the proper techniques and will use low mesh counts (110 is all we had), poor film output, and bad printing technique (this is not athletic printing). At the end of the day, the bad print quality is blamed on bad separations. Once you have had success with these techniques you will go out of your way to tell customers to “bring it on.” You won’t turn down any jobs or be afraid of photo realistic images.

Fashion week was held last week in New York City and I think for the masses it is one more boring “I could never wear that” event. But, if you are in the decorated apparel industry you need to not think of runway shows and Fashion Week as not being part of what you do. OK, so you don’t see how a model wearing a flowing gown with something awful on her head means anything to you – BUT – what you do see is lots of color, lots of flowing coverups, great design elements and and an overall trend for style – that will sooner later trickle down to the decorated apparel industry.

A recent article in Daily Finance - an online financial site was titled: From Runway to Retail: Big Chains Size Up Fashion Week Trends. This article talks about the many changes they see in fashion trends including the resurgence of NEON (a gasp from the industry). Also, they report designers were once again using bright colors and showing lots of exotic prints and prints showing an African and Asian influence.

According to the article “Neon colors (remember the ’80s?) made a comeback, turning up in some surprising places, such as Oscar de la Renta evening wear, he says. At Banana Republic, it might show up in a summer T-shirt. Bold prints, tribal patterns and sporty looks are poised to turn up in America’s malls this spring.”

Magazine Marie Claire had a great article titled: Top Spring Fashion Trends Straight from the Runway.  And the lead paragraph said “Whether it’s a stark white or an intense pop of electric neon, the looks from New York City’s Spring 2012 Fashion Week (that is the season of the items being shown) touched both ends of the spectrum, and then some.”

Like a lot of Americans, my wife, Pat, and myself are hooked on reality TV shows like Project Runway (ok, we also love the cooking and DIY shows) and even here you can learn a lot about the latest trends.

One thing I noticed on a recent trip to a Macy’s Department store was a change in the T-Shirt collections. There are certainly still a lot of distressed images and tons of discharge ink (which I love) – BUT – I noticed major brands like Affliction and a few others more to the back of the rack or in small non-prominent display areas. And, I did notice a trend for more color in the prints. Of course if you wander into the kids department (I have a five and twelve year old granddaughters) all you see is COLOR with way too much glitter. That seems to never change.

To see a LOT of videos and pictures from Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week click here and enjoy. You will NOT see too many T-Shirts but you will get an idea for colors, overall trends and fashions to be in stores in the Spring of 2012.

The Fabulous Fowl on tour. I am second from left. (Click on photos to see larger version.)

This is a “reprint” of a fun little article I wrote on the 40th anniversary of Woodstock in August of 2009. Two years later I thought I might share this with you all again…….Don’t forget to click on the photos to see enlarged versions.

They say if you remember the 60’s you weren’t there.  Well…… I graduated from high school in 1965 and I remember part of the 60’s……
I was watching a special on TV last week about Woodstock which was held 40 years ago this weekend.  My granddaughter, Autumn, asked me if I knew anything about it and I told her I would tell her a  “little bedtime” story.  It went like this….. Remember…. this is a bedtime story……

……..This is kind of how I remember that summer in August of 1969 ………

The painted Magic Bus. Party tim

It was the summer of 1969 and my band, The Fabulous Fowl, was on tour on the East Coast. We were just a bunch of long haired guys who had taken my old VW bus on the road.  Boy, those things hate mountains.  With an air cooled engine we had to slow to 20 miles per hour on hills.  The bus finally gave out in Missouri (we had to tuck our hair in our hats!).  We traded it for an old school bus and we decided to paint it along the way.  It took us six days to go from Phoenix to New York to play our first gig on the tour.

When we got to New York we kept hearing about this festival called Woodstock so naturally we had to go. We had a bus full of gear and headed towards Bethel, NY.

I am on stage with Jimi Hendrix!

We actually had bought tickets along the way but when we got there no one cared. You could get in for free as long as you had the courage to wait in long lines on the road.  What a mess.  But hey, we were long haired musicians who were use to sleeping in the bus.

Once we got there we simply pushed and shoved our way to be close to the stage.  In fact, we got so close that I was able to get on stage for the now famous Jimi Hendrix 90 minute set.  You can see me sitting right behind Jimi in this photo.

I still have the ticket

BUT….. during the set the bass player got sick and started to puke. He must have had some bad acid.  Jimi looked around and I yelled out “I can play bass.”  He gave me a wink and there I was playing bass for the rest of the set.  Purple Haze, The Star Spangled Banner and more.  WOW!  I never made the album cover but that is me slapping away on some of the tunes.

Playing bass with Jimi! WOW!!

The best part of the entire event was when I discovered the love of my life. I had left the stage and was walking by the fence put up to keep people from the stage.  I heard someone yell out “I love bass players” so of course I had to see who it was. It was a beautiful long haired girl right by the fence.  She looked at me and I looked at her and it was love at first sight.  That was my future wife,

Pat, who just happened to be living near Pittsburgh, PA and drove all night with friends to see the concert.

Scott & Pat meet for first time

Now here is the ironic part of the story.  After “my gig” we headed back to the bus.  It has been raining hard and everything was muddy.  Pat and I were standing together trying to keep warm when a photographer snapped the famous photo that graced the Woodstock album cover. Actually he snapped a bunch of them and the one where you can see it is Pat never got used. We were never given credit for it. Someone else claimed it was them and the world never knew.

Scott & Pat in famous Woodstock photo.

On the second day there, we were so friggin hungry and there was very little food. We stumbled across a small vending booth where they were selling shirts.  I saw this guy with a wooden frame printing a simple print using an ironing board to hold the shirts and hand holding the screen.  The design was so loose you could be off register an inch and it would not matter.   I had never done screen printing before. That is where I learned how to screen print!

The shirt stand where I learned how to screen print.

This hippie guy, I think his name was Spider…..yeah…. that was his name…..told me how to hold the squeegee and for the next two days I printed thousands of Woodstock shirts.  I think we sold them for $15.  What an experience.  I was hooked!  You can see the shirt we printed.

My first printed shirt! (not...)

So……. as my granddaughter fell asleep I started to ponder how accurate my story was.  Well…. it was “close.”  The truth is that I met my wife while I was playing in a HOT college band called the Fabulous Foul.  We wore old tuxedos and played at the popular Pitcher House in Tempe, Arizona.  We packed them in!  We moved on to play the #1 teen club at that time, The Fifth Estate.  And, we did open for Van Morrison with Them, The Lovin Spoonful, The Doors and others.  And, Alice Cooper (Vince) came to hear us on a regular basis. The year was 1966 and I was fresh out of high school.  Pat and I got married in 1967.

Cool

But hey……. it was a great story.  Any use of Woodstock photos was for fun and pleasure only.

I do have a few more photos from my collection of that great time.  I hope you enjoyed my bedtime story.  If you have any of your own Woodstock stories or photos, we would all love to read them here.  Comments welcome!

That bus was a bitch to drive!

This is VERY funny! It is a short video called T-Shirt War by two wild and crazy guys called Rhett and Link at……. you guessed it… www.RhettandLink.com. These guys have produced over 200 internet videos that are fun to watch. They also write music, produce custom videos, have a pretty funny website with a lot of followers and more.

This video has had over 7,500,000 views on YouTube!

T-Shirt War video

I just returned from Hamburg Germany where I did seminars and videotaping at Fespa Fabric. It was a great show and I had a lot of fun and worked hard. Don’t miss my show reports below. I did short re-caps of each day and I did a number of interesting interviews. The one NOT to miss is my interview with the Erik and Angelo from Aeoon. They introduced a REAL high production DTG printer with low ink prices. This one is going to change the industry!

Fespa Fabric Hamburg - Day Three Show Report with Scott Fresener

Title

Fespa Fabric Hamburg - Day Three Show Report with Scott Fresener

Runtime

6:45

Views

183

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N/A

Description

Scott Fresener www.T-BizNetwork.com gives his final Fespa Fabric trade show report from Hamburg Germany. Learn about the overall feel/vibe at the show and get a little insight into Hamburg.

Title

Scott Fresener interviews Aeoon - the next generation of digital T-Shirt printers

Runtime

13:23

Views

1,911

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N/A

Description

Scott Fresener www.T-BizNetwork.com interviews Erik Huber of www.Aeoon.com. This interview took place at FESPA Digital in Hamburg Germany. Erik and partner Angelo Schiestl introduced the next generation of DTG printer that will print over 400 light shirts and 200 dark shirts PER HOUR. This is certainly a milestone in the T-Shirt printing industry and this is a company to be watched.

Title

Fespa Fabric Day Two Show Report with Scott Fresener

Runtime

5:21

Views

178

Posted

N/A

Description

Scott Fresener of www.T-BizNetwork.com reports on Day Two of Fespa Fabric in Hamburg Germany.

Title

Scott Fresener Interviews Ronald Van Kelst from PC Technology - Belgium

Runtime

6:21

Views

125

Posted

N/A

Description

This short video is an interview by Scott Fresener of T-Biz Network with Ronald Van Kelst from PC Technology in Belgium. Scott and Ronald have been friends for a long time and they talk about the industry, the FESPA Fabric trade show, and the meaning of life. Check it out. www.T-BizNetwork.com.

Title

Fespa Fabric Hamburg - Day One Show Report with Scott Fresener

Runtime

2:48

Views

199

Posted

N/A

Description

Scott Fresener of T-BizNetwork.com gives a quick Day One show report on Fespa Fabric held in Hamburg Germany.

Title

Scott Fresener Interviews Jean Emile Inghilleri from Norleas in Norway

Runtime

4:06

Views

106

Posted

N/A

Description

Scott Fresener of www.T-BizNetwork.com does a fun and short interview with his friend Jean Emile Inghilleri from Norleas in Norway. Jean Emile is a well known screen print and digital machine supplier in the region. Check out Norleas at www.norleas.no.

Title

Peter Choi Interviewed by Scott Fresener

Runtime

5:15

Views

382

Posted

N/A

Description

Scott Fresener www.T-BizNetwork.com interviews long time industry veteran, Peter Choi and his son Justin of All American Mfg. & Supply www.screenprintsupply.com. This short interview takes place at Fespa Digita/Fabric in Hamburg Germany 2011.

Title

Scott Fresener on FESPA Fabric Hamburg

Runtime

1:37

Views

181

Posted

N/A

Description

In this short video Scott Fresener talks about the Freseners Fabric seminar program at FESPA Fabric in Hamburg Germany May 24-26, 2011. Scott and friends are doing 18 presentations on a wide range of T-Shirt decorating topics.

The shirt that started it all!

Wow, has this industry changed. For those newbies and even some who think they are old timers, how many of you can remember the shirt on the left? Yes, I own an original Farrah Fawcett shirt circa 1976. In fact, back in 2002 Impressions Magazine was doing a 25th Anniversary issue and I can remember editor, Marcia Derryberry, calling me in a panic saying she had looked hi and low for a Farrah Fawcett shirt until someone said “Fresener has one.” This shirt appeared in that issue. I made her sign in blood that she would return the shirt.

The history lesson is this was “the shirt” that started things really cooking. Impressions Magazine was launched in 1977 (Bill Windsor where are you?), and between Impressions, Farrah Fawcett and some very smart entrepreneurs, a real industry was born. In fact licensed products were a brand new novelty back then. I think the Farrah shirt taught corporate America there was gold in T-Shirts.

The image on this shirt was called a “Litho” or litho heat transfer. These were the first photorealistic shirt images. If you wanted KISS or any rock band of the day on a shirt, you had a heavy, rubbery litho transfer.  No, screen printing photorealism on black shirts had not been “invented” then.  I would LOVE to see comments on this and pictures of your old litho shirts.  Chances are you have very little image left and a white solid block of plastisol on the shirt.

These were printed on heat transfer paper using standard offset/lithography printing methods with special cmyk inks.  The image was then backed in white plastisol and the image was applied with a heat press.  There were millions of these made where the image would wash off after the first wash cycle (not good).  In fact, the heat transfer business killed itself around 1980 from bad transfers.

It is interesting that over the years litho transfers have come and gone.  They were big again a few years ago when vintage/classic images were kicking in. They have now lost favor again beaten out by all-over prints.

But hey…. they will be back!

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I have not blogged in awhile and thought it time to get back on track. Traveling knocks the wind out of the work load. Here is an update and some thoughts.

Color Separations
This one really caught me off guard. I have been doing separations for a long time. They were usually for T-Seps or FastFilms users who needed the masters touch on a critical job. In February I started to promote “let Scott Fresener do your seps for $50″ and BOOM. I got slammed with business. It is typically either large companies who need me for overflow or critical jobs, and small companies who don’t normally print high-end work. I have done over 200 sets of seps in the last 90 days. I dream about them…… :) – or….. I have nightmares about them. Nothing like trying to work in Photoshop in a dream. It’s a real monster!

Retro Articles
I was kicking around ideas for articles and dug up items from the past. I wrote about the Blur  and Fuzzy look on shirts that was popular over 20 years ago. Then I wrote about the Fake Stitch Look. Both articles ran in Images Magazine in the UK and the editor recently wrote me saying they had the most response to my retro articles of any articles in years! I guess retro is back. If you have an idea for other retro articles let me know. I probably wrote about it 25 years ago and forgot.

T-Biz Website Speed
I have been struggling to get the speed of the website faster. I use Wordpress as the main software for T-Biz Network and it is typically slow and a little bloated. Over the last few weeks I have changed to a new page caching program that speeds things up and I have put a lot of the graphic images and key large files on my Amazon S3 Servers so when you load a page the graphics load from these third party servers and not my main dedicated server. That, plus a few other tweaks and I think the load time of the pages is now a LOT faster. Let me know what you think.

Cutting Edge Articles
The opposite of retro is cutting edge. I just published a nice little article on using QR Codes on T-Shirts. This is a neat and easy process and very timely.

Fresener’s Fabric
I was asked by FESPA to put together a seminar program for FESPA Fabric in Hamburg Germany, May 24-26. I am doing a number of the seminars myself and have a lot of other speakers. If you get to FESPA Fabric come by and say hi. Read more about the show and the seminar program here. Remember, the seminars are free and are right on the show floor.

T-RIP
I finally started shipping the new T-RIP about a month ago and it has also gone through the roof.  People who have it love it. We have worked through a few small bugs mainly with updating for the older FastRIP. T-RIP is very stable and prints beautiful films from Corel, Illustrator and Photoshop. If you have not checked it out you can download a 15-day free trial and road test it here.

Screen Masters in Orlando
I had the great pleasure of doing what was billed as the Screen Masters Workshop at FESPA Americas in Orlando in February. I taught a number of sessions along with good friends, Ad Versteeg, Bhargav Mistry, Michel Caza and Charlie Taublieb. It was a great experience and we had a lot of fun with it. We had nothing to do with the “Mount Rushmore” graphic. That was from FESPA’s marketing team. But, the picture of me took off 20 years!

Comments by Scott Fresener.

After much work and long hours I have finally released the new version of T-RIP film output software. Initially I was going to make a “simple” plugin for Photoshop and then Corel Draw that only worked on the Epson 1400. But, after hundreds of calls like “will it work on the R1800? Will it work on the 2200?  Will it work on my old 3000?” I finally decided to jump in with both feet. As many of you know, I was the leader in RIPs with my popular FastRIP. My guess is we sold about 10,000 of them over eight years at U.S. Screen.

I went back to my old programmers who did FastRIP and decided to offer a film output rip that worked for everyone – large and small shops. I told them it had to be robust, easy to use, have good flexibility for a wide range of films, print with great accuracy, and make perfect films every time.

The NEW and IMPROVED T-RIP works on almost all Epson model printers and now even some Canon and Roland printers. The good news is it doesn’t need a dongle! Go to the T-RIP home page here.

T-RIP program is ONLY Windows based, but, we have had success with users running it on Intel based Mac computers running Windows emulation programs. Email info@tbiznetwork.com for more details and download the free trial to see for yourself.

And, I will also be offering upgrades for my old FastRIP users who have a new computer system. Check it out and download a 15 day Free Trial here.