calculating ink coverage

Is there a way in photoshop to make a selection and have it tell you what percentage of the canvas you have selected? This would make calculating ink costs for jobs pretty easy I would suspect.

I think in the new version of cs that's coming out this spring (or summer) there is supposed to be an area command.

try the histogram panel, paul. there's a part that tells you # of pixels. not sure if i'm reading it correctly, though. that number could relate to something else. for example, when i first look at it, it gives me one number, but if i double-click the histogram graph, it gives me a larger number (which i THINK is the right one).

from there, you could take some additional steps to figuring out ink coverage.

I think you should try to use our software APFill Ink Coverage Calculator 5.4.
It can calculate coverage for selected area of the screen or CMYK coverage for document in PS, PDF format:
APFill - Ink Coverage Calculator, How to calculate ink coverage and consumption - AVPSOFT
and here is a short guide:
Home Printing Tips - How To Calculate Print Coverage and Cost

Thanks

photoshop will not figure in your screen mesh, squeegee angle, or pressure

Ehi paul,
my suggestion is to do some jobs and see the cost of the ink. Use that factor like a multiplicator factor.

In my case a common job for tshirt costs about 10€ of ink..15€ included ink removers and so on.

Do not give too much time to the ink cost..ink costs a bit!

Good work,
Fabio

For t-shirt printing I do I charge a pretty much flat rate--I'm in agreement with you there Fabio, but it's getting to the point now where I'm doing 1000+ runs of LP covers with solvent inks costing $150-200 a gallon and this makes a lot more difference. Screen mesh and EOM I find I've got dialed in pretty well and squeegee angle and pressure I don't feel deviate too too much. Thanks for the Histogram panel suggestion, Daniel. I will definitely give it a shot. I'm printing manually so this is never really going to give me consistent results. I guess I'm just looking for some help eyeballing if something is 10%, 25% or 50% coverage because I really feel I have no idea. As I said before, when you're printing 1000 LP jackets with solvent inks, knowing if something is 10% coverage or 30% coverage can make a $75 difference in pricing, which is something the people I'm dealing with will care about.

Rhino 3d works great as a cad ap as well and you can bring in Illustrator files and do an area command. So, if you were to have a selection in photoshop you could create a path. export the path to illustrator. export as dxf and bring into Rhino. Select your closed curve and run an area command and you will get the area.

Rhino has a free 30 day trial if this is an absilute must for you. Feel free to send me an example file and I can run it in Rhino for you and let you know how it works.

Modeling tools for designers

Rhi8no is also a 3d app so just ignore that aspect...because it is also an extremely powerful 2d line editor. It blows illustrator away when it comes to line work.

There is also a free beta version for OSX

Rhino OSX

Hi paul204,

We have an application called Printcalc at www.printcalc.com, we are proud to announce an updated version that now supports, EPS and PS in addition to PDF. This is an easy to use web application that reports the % CMYK and Spot colours.

Mark Redman
Printcalc