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Originally Posted by majesticmind |  | | | | | | | | | So Can I still get proper halftones using a non postscript 3 printer folowing your directions in photoshop? | |  | |  | |
Most inkjet printers resist printing halftones dots, but instead us an internal dither pattern which creates a continuous tone. To get around this driver limitation, the image needs to be sent as a b&w bitmap.
For single color it is easy, simply change the image into a bitmap and set a halftone value. 55LPI is as high as reasonable with a 305 mesh.
There is a way to produce all 4 color separations, but it requires a big fast computers. Switch the graphic to a cmyk version of the graphic, then size the graphic to 1/2 the printers resolution. For example,my epson is 1440, so i'd use 720. If the computer is really really fast, you can use the full 1440.
Once you have the high res CMYK image, apply the pixelate filter, "color halftone". Start with a number like 10. From this simply goto the cyan channel, convert to bitmap, print, undo bitmap, goto the magenta channel, convert to bitmap, print, undo convert to bitmap, repeat repeat.
The color halftone filter produces a CMYK separation. When converting to bitmap, use diffusion dither. (i guess). As long as the graphic is an even unit of measure as the printers DPI, it shoud work out close to what a rip would do.
Postscript laser printers make great output devices. They 11x17 ones weight so much, that they are often sold locally "for pickup only" at very low prices. Rather than buying a rip for an inkjet, i'd suggest upgrading to a postscript laser.
fred