Over One Million Separations done by FastFilms and now T-Seps since 1999!*
A trip to the past by Scott Fresener
In the 80’s and early 90’s I was teaching how to color separation using a process camera in my training classes in Arizona. We had a full darkroom setup and taught the camera as part of our normal classes. In 1986 my wife and I wrote the 1,000 page manual called The Encyclopedia of Garment Printing where we detailed how to cut “Rubylith” masks and do the dozens of camera shots necessary to complete a set of separations for dark shirts.
When computers first came out I saw the light and knew that one day it would make life a LOT easier. In the early and mid-90’s when computer graphics started to come of age I taught color separations in the early versions of Photoshop. In face, I traveled the world teaching this process at consulting jobs and at large industry trade shows.
It did not take long to realize that in many cases for standard images the process was almost always the same. In 1999 I wrote the first affordable automated program that did high-end color separations in Photoshop. It was called FastFilms. The program was so popular that I sold over 1,000 copies in the first year to customers around the world!
Over the years the program evolved as computers got faster and the separation routines improved. The program was so popular world-wide that we ended up with it in FIVE languages!
Between 1999 and 2009 over 10,000 copies of FastFilms were sold!
In 2010 the name was changed to T-Seps and it was greatly improved and updated with additional routines. Between 2010 and early 2023 another 5,000 copies have been sold. That gives a user base of around 15,000 customers.
* In fairness we don’t really know how many seps have been done in 19 years. But, my guess is if you have bought a T-Shirt since 2000 there is a GREAT chance it was separated with FastFilms or T-Seps. Some of the largest printers in the world use our programs. We have some customers with over 50 licenses and huge art staffs who rely on the programs every hour of the day. In fact these large customers boast of doing thousands of separations with our programs every year.
Simple math helps our “boast” of “millions of separations done.” If we only look at the first ten years of 10,000 users (at a rate of 1,000 new users per year for ten years) – and if those users only did 20 seps per year that equals 1,100,000 seps! That does not even count the additional new users added since the program’s name was changed to T-Seps in 2010.
