HOW TO USE PHOTOS/COLLAGES WITH THE RISOGRAPH PRINTER

Oscar Wilde once said, “To collage and print is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.”

That isn’t even nearly close to what he actually said (which is why you should always fact check a blog post), but we’re going to pretend that it is for the sake of this post.

If you’re someone who wants to experiment with using the risograph, but illustrative work isn’t really your bag, you can still enjoy all the quirks of the printing process while using photos or collages.

First, we'll be talking about photos in this post! Stay tuned 'til next time for tips and tricks on collaging.

STEP 1: GATHER YOUR PHOTOS

While the risograph printer is not ideal for printing 1:1 photos (there will always be some slight variation in the prints), it’s still possible to use for creating unique and interesting prints for color photography.

For example, I’ll be using this photo that I took using my iPhone in 2018.

To print this on the risograph with as much color accuracy as possible, I’ll be formatting this print to have four printable layers: Cyan (Aqua), Magenta (Fluorescent Pink), Yellow, and Black. 

To complete this, we need to use a photo editing program like Adobe Photoshop. (In another post, we'll talk about how to use Spectrolite). 

STEP 2: OPEN YOUR IMAGE IN PHOTOSHOP/EDITING SOFTWARE OF YOUR CHOICE

We’ll open up our image in Photoshop! Important to know before we go any further: any adjustments you want to make to your photo - lighting, contrast, color, etc – needs to be completed now before moving on to the next step. 

I’ve made some adjustments to my image - the contrast, brightness, and a little bit of the saturation. These edits are up to your preference and tastes! 

STEP 3: CONVERT YOUR IMAGE FROM RGB TO CMYK. 

At the top of our Photoshop window, we’ll navigate to Image > Mode, and select “CMYK”.

This will prompt you to flatten the image - hit ‘OK’.

Now that our image is in CMYK mode, we can navigate to the Channels window in Photoshop. (If you can’t see this, navigate to Window > Channels). 

When you open that navigation panel, what you’ll see is one layer labelled ‘CMYK’, followed by layers named for each color. 

STEP 4: GRABBING THE INFORMATION OF EACH LAYER 

We need the information on each one of those labelled layers to divide our image into 4 printable images. To do this, we’ll make sure in the Channels window to select one layer at a time. I will be starting with the Cyan layer. 

At the bottom of the Channels window, you’ll see a small circle made with a dotted line. Click that circle. You have now selected all of the white values in the image. 

Navigate to the top of the menu, Select > Inverse. Now you have all of the dark values selected. 

Navigating back to your Layers window, create a new layer. With your selection still active, use the Bucket Tool to Fill the layer. 

This is how my workspace looks with all of my layers visible after that. 

Important: we need to make sure to turn the visibility off on the layers that we bucket fill as we go about this process – if that layer is still on, it can cause muddiness/mess up our values as we continue to grab other layers. 

 Turning the visibility off on your bucket filled layer, repeat those steps to get 4 different layers (naming them as you go): Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black. 

This is what my document looks like after I’ve done that for every color. 

STEP 5: PUT EACH LAYER INTO A NEW DOCUMENT 

Select the layer you’d like to copy. Ctrl+ A to ‘Select All’. Copy the layer. 

At the top of our Photoshop window, navigate to File > New, and under ‘color mode’, select Greyscale. Photoshop should default the size of the new document to the size of the image you have copied on your clipboard. 

Paste the layer. Save your document (in-progress) as a .PSD file, named for the color. You don’t want to get your layers mixed up and accidentally print your yellow layer with black ink! Repeat these steps with all of your layers. 

STEP 6: CONVERT TO HALFTONE OR DIFFUSION 

We need to convert these layers so that they’re ready to print on the risograph. We’ll navigate to Image Mode > Bitmap. It will prompt you to flatten layers - hit ‘OK’. 

Halftones 

When using halftones, you need to make sure that the angles are different for each layer, so that everything overlaps correctly to create a wide range of hues and values. 

This handy chart, courtesy of Wikipedia, shows us 4 different ways we can organize our angles to create a circle with properly overlapping dots. 

Output: for a print-ready image, output will always be 300 - this is representative of 300 dpi, or ‘dots per inch’. 

Frequency: this will dictate whether or not your halftone texture is applied with large dots or smaller dots. Smaller number = larger dots. Larger number = smaller dots. I’ll be using 80 for this image. 

Angle: This refers to the angle of the dots for this layer - again, refer to that handy dandy little image from Wikipedia to make sure each layer is set up at the correct angle. Since this layer is my Cyan layer, I’ll be setting the angle to 45 degrees. 

This is what my Cyan layer looks like once I’ve applied that. 

If I’d rather use the Diffusion option, what’s nice about that is that we don’t need to be worried about angles or frequency; it just automatically applies to the layer. 

This is what that layer looks like using Diffusion instead. 

STEP 7: REPEAT THAT PROCESS FOR ALL LAYERS 

You’ll take each layer and put it into a new document, converting those documents to be Bitmapped images. Once you’ve completed that, you’ll save each image (ideally as a .PDF). 

STEP 8: COMBINE YOUR SINGLE PAGES INTO ONE MULTIPLE-PAGE PDF 

This is best done while also creating a separate note or document that says which page is printed with which ink color. You can combine single pages into one multiple-page PDF using tools like Adobe Acrobat – there are also websites that offer to complete the service for free, but tread with caution on those seven seas, sailor. You never know what kind of malware could be lingering around the download link. 

STEP 9: SUBMIT YOUR BEAUTIFUL PHOTOS FOR PRINT! 

With your multiple-page PDF in hand (and your document to go with it that labels each page as the color it’ll be printed with), you can submit your files to print with us at PAPYRJAM! If you’d rather have a chance to print it yourself, come in during our monthly RISO CLUB or book a PRIVATE LESSON during STUDIO HOURS!