Get advice to help you create your t-shirt graphics. Discuss t-shirt design software, special effect techniques, or other topics related to creating a t-shirt design on your computer. If you'd rather hire a graphic designer to do the work for you, please post in our Referrals and Recommendations section here.
Okay, I'll take a stab. Most images off the net are 72 dpi gifs or jpegs at size. Sometimes you get lucky and get good ones.
Open the image in Photoshop.
If you need to resize that would be in Image>Image size. If you need to remap the resolution of the image, that would also be in this dialog box. 300 dpi is a general target resolution. Please note that interpolating small, low resolution images into bigger, deeper ones may end up in a digital mess. If that occurs, you will need to source a better image. Garbage in, garbage out.
Change the mode to Grayscale in Image>Mode>Grayscale.
From here, you can send the Grayscale image to your RIP or Output device.
If, for whatever reason, you are unable to adjust settings for your output device (ie; no postscript) then you can change the Grayscale to a Bitmap as follows.
Go to Image>Bitmap. A Resolution dialog box will appear. I'll assume the output resolution is at 300. At the Method Drop down menu, select Halftone Screen... Select OK
Set the Frequency and Angle to your preference, Frequency is generally between 45-65 for garments unless you're doing something tricky.
Set the Shape to your Preference. I use either Round or Elliptical for most jobs. The other shapes I consider design elements.
Save as your desired format and print.
As an aside, the lower bitmapped LPI's are a nice way of faxing halftones to people who haven't quite yet moved into the new Millennium.
__________________
Weigh the world and pry asunder all things to their inmost core.
You will find them made of wonder, everything is something more.
I am having the hardest time here maybe i'm missing something. I greyscale the image then i pixelated went into color half tone when i run it thru my rip it looks more inverted alot of things are missing out of the pic when i burn the screen used a 230 mesh
@LFG: it maybe your print settings in the print dialogue box. Make sure "do not scale' is selected, from what you mentioned about parts of the image not showing, this could be the cause.
@PositiveDave: The easiest way to make a halftone pattern out of a photo image is using bitmap mode.
Open your photoshop image, change color mode to grayscale and make any tone adjustments as needed.
change Mode to Bitmap, the program will ask if you want to flatten the image click OK. now you will get the bitmap options, no matter what input resolution your design is you will want to use an output of at least 300ppi for a clean dot. under Method choose 'Halftone screen' and click OK. Now the options for the halftone screen, Frequency depends on the LPI you want. If using 280mesh i often use 55lpi. Set your angle (i use 21degrees but many people use different angles, a popular one is 22.5). under Shape choose 'Ellipse' (you can also experiment with using 'Dot', for a 1 color job this option sometimes gives slightly more detail)
@LFG: it maybe your print settings in the print dialogue box. Make sure "do not scale' is selected, from what you mentioned about parts of the image not showing, this could be the cause.
@PositiveDave: The easiest way to make a halftone pattern out of a photo image is using bitmap mode.
Open your photoshop image, change color mode to grayscale and make any tone adjustments as needed.
change Mode to Bitmap, the program will ask if you want to flatten the image click OK. now you will get the bitmap options, no matter what input resolution your design is you will want to use an output of at least 300ppi for a clean dot. under Method choose 'Halftone screen' and click OK. Now the options for the halftone screen, Frequency depends on the LPI you want. If using 280mesh i often use 55lpi. Set your angle (i use 21degrees but many people use different angles, a popular one is 22.5). under Shape choose 'Ellipse' (you can also experiment with using 'Dot', for a 1 color job this option sometimes gives slightly more detail)
Actually the easiest way is to use a RIP
If you have a 300dpi image and 50lpi screen the image is broken up into cells 6x6 pixels dimension. There are only 37 shades of grey in the picture so if you have a gradient there will be nasty postscript bands along your gradient!
Send it to a RIP and you have 1440/50 squared pixels (only 256 steps in Postscript language 2, v.3 is effectively unlimited).
Do it with a RIP - you know it makes sense.
...and another thing,
I prefer Euclidean Ellipse as a dot shape, if you have ellipses you get egg shapes which get bigger and leave star shapes in the shadows, euclidean dots have elliptical holes in a black surround.
(does that make sense?)
1. In PS, open your image file.
2. Convert it into GREYSCALE. IMAGE>MODE>GREYSCALE
3. Adjust your resolution to 300. IMAGE>IMAGE SIZE...
4. (Adjust size of your design to your actual preference)
5. (Adjust brightness and contrast to your greyscale.)
6. Convert into Halftone. IMAGE>MODE>BITMAP
Specs: > Output : 1000 ppi
Method : Halftone
Frequency : 45 (or your preference)
Angle: 22.5
Shape: Ellipse
7. Print directly to printer.
1000 ppi for the resolution will result to a sharp and better ellipse output, some do it with 300 resolution but the dot shape becomes squared or pixelated.