Separate

Separate answers one question: how many pulls, in what order, in what ink. Give it an image and it splits it into layers, each one a single pass of the press.

Getting a source in

Three ways in:

• From Design. Actions ▸ Send to Separate in the Design module flattens the visible layers and hands them over.
• From Photos or From Files. A photo reference or a scanned sketch. PNG, JPEG, HEIC, or the first page of a PDF.

The source is cropped to the block. You choose how: "Fill — crop to block" trims what falls outside the block ratio, or "Fit — keep everything" keeps the whole image and fills the rest of the block with white paper.

Replace the source later from Method ▸ Source ▸ Replace.

The three methods

Method lives in the Method popover, along with layer count, ink weight and the block type.

Method	What it does	When to reach for it
Posterize	Flat colour quantization	A reduction from a photo reference
Threshold stack	Light to dark, cumulative luminance bands	The classic reduction sequence
Manual	Paint the separations by hand	When the image will not tell you where the colours go

Under the method:

Control	What it does
Layer count	2 to 8 layers. Each layer is one pull of the press.
Ink weight	Shifts every threshold at once. 0.50 is evenly spaced; lighter or darker moves the whole set.
Leave white as paper	Near-white areas get no ink at all
Block	Reduction, or Multi-block. Reduction means one block carved further between pulls; Multi-block means one block per colour.
Registration marks	None, Corner crosses, T-bar, Kento or Custom

Change any of these and the separation re-runs in the background at working resolution, then again at full resolution for export.

The palette and print order

Open the Layers panel. Each layer is a row: an order number, a swatch, a name, and the coverage it takes on the block.

Layers are listed light to dark, which is the order you print a reduction. Drag a row to change the print order. The numbers renumber themselves and the simulator restacks.

Tap a swatch to edit the colour. The colour sheet gives you a system colour picker, a hex field, the colour the engine found in the image, and Match to my ink: the ink recipes from your Studio library, sorted by how close they sit to the swatch. Pick one and the layer carries the recipe's name and colour. That is the point of keeping the recipe library. If you mixed the sunset orange once, you should never have to guess it again.

Rename layers. "Persimmon" is a useful name at the press. "Layer 2" is not.

Protected regions

Some things must stay one colour whatever the image says: a moon, a signature, a border. Tap Protect a region on a layer, drag a rectangle, and that area is held out of the engine's hands.

Painting by hand

On a manual separation, tap Paint on a layer and draw where that layer prints. A brush size control, an erase mode, an undo, and Clear painted mask. You can paint over any method, not just Manual.

The print simulator

The simulator shows the print after every pull, on paper. Not the layer, the accumulated result.

The stage strip along the bottom shows a thumbnail per stage, labelled with the pass: "01 · BASE", "02 · +PERSIMMON", "03 · +KEY". Drag the scrubber under it to step through the sequence, or tap a stage to lock the view there.

Paper matters, so the View popover lets you set the ground to Warm paper or White. A design that sings on white can go muddy on a warm rag sheet, and it is cheaper to find that out here.

Actions ▸ Share simulation writes the whole stage strip out as a single PNG, which is a good thing to send a collaborator who wants to know what they are getting.

Block state

Switch View ▸ Show to Block state and the preview stops being a print and becomes the lino.

For a reduction this is the honest view: at each stage it shows the standing surface, what is left to print with. Carved-away lino is gone for good, and the block state says so. For multi-block it shows the one block for that colour.

Turn on "Mirror (as carved)" and it flips, because the block is the reverse of the print. That is the view to hold up against the block on the bench.

Exports

Actions opens the export sheet. Two switches sit above the outputs:

Switch	What it does
Mirror for the block	The block is a mirror of the print. Keep it on for carbon, acetone and iron-on transfer.
Print-ready black	Renders every layer in black for laser transfer. Off keeps the ink colours.

Then the outputs:

• Per-layer PNGs. Full source resolution, one file per layer, with registration marks and a caption.
• Combined carving guide. A multi-page PDF, one page per layer, at exactly your block dimensions, with the print order in the footer. If the block is larger than A3 the sheet says so and gives the scale.
• Print 1:1. Straight to AirPrint.

Every export carries the registration marks at 1:1 scale. If the 1:1 PDF says it has been corrected for your printer, that is the calibration from Carve plan doing its job.

Sending it on

The primary button in the toolbar says Send to Carve plan. It makes a carving guide from this separation, carries the same registration marks over, and loads all the layers, so the Carve plan module can show you one layer at a time or all of them together.

A project can hold more than one separation. When it does, a Separations button appears in the toolbar to switch between them, rename them, or start a new one. Try the four-layer version and the six-layer version and keep both.