My customer wants this B&W image on the front of a hot pink T-shirt. How would you do this? I don't have the expensive separation software, but I do have FastRIP that can print halftones.
My only idea is to print a solid white box for the background, flash it, and then print the black halftone image on top. Is there a better way?
Or would it work to burn the inverse of the black halftone on a screen for white? Never tried it before.
Open the image in Photoshop, convert to greyscale (if not already) Using levels (histogram) darken the darks and lighten the lits a tad.
Place the image on a white background and flatten - this is your black plate
Place the image on a black background and flatten - Invert the image. Adjust the tones using curves to darken the image a bit. - this is your white..
Print at 45 lpi and 25 angle for both and use a 156-196 mesh for both screens
This is pretty much how I would do it other than using higher mesh frames.
Open the image in Photoshop, convert to greyscale (if not already) Using levels (histogram) darken the darks and lighten the lits a tad.
Place the image on a white background and flatten - this is your black plate
Place the image on a black background and flatten - Invert the image. Adjust the tones using curves to darken the image a bit. - this is your white..
Print at 45 lpi and 25 angle for both and use a 156-196 mesh for both screens
This is pretty much how I would do it other than using higher mesh frames.
Thanks Richard, I'm about to try it out. So should I do a:
white/black?
white/flash/black?
white/flash/white/black?
white/flash/white/flash/black?
They are on hot pink shirts. It seems it would blur without a flash before the black, but I haven't tried something like this.
Place the image on a white background and flatten - this is your black plate
Place the image on a black background and flatten - Invert the image. Adjust the tones using curves to darken the image a bit. - this is your white..
Richard, I have a question regarding the backgrounds. I think I understand what you are saying to do, but I don't understand why the background color will make a difference since the image is setting on top of it, where none of the background shows through. Both of my images look identical after flattening them. Am I misunderstanding something?
Hey Richard, I noticed you are back from your hiatus. Welcome back ! If you get a chance, could you comment on my above questions... I'm about a burn the screens for this, and I'm scared I'm going to screw it up .
You are correct since the image is cropped. If you had text above and below the picture you would need the black and white backgrounds in order to extract the black and white properly.
Here is what the seps/plates should look like based off the jpeg you posted.
Traditional screen printing. Lots of halftones thus warranting high mesh frames. Manually I would print this at 45-55 lpi, elliptical dots, 25 angle for both screens and use a 196 mesh for the white underbase and 230 for the black.
Me personally I would probably print a gray plate as well to help with the mid tones yet black and white will yield a good print
You are correct since the image is cropped. If you had text above and below the picture you would need the black and white backgrounds in order to extract the black and white properly.
Here is what the seps/plates should look like based off the jpeg you posted.
Traditional screen printing. Lots of halftones thus warranting high mesh frames. Manually I would print this at 45-55 lpi, elliptical dots, 25 angle for both screens and use a 196 mesh for the white underbase and 230 for the black.
Me personally I would probably print a gray plate as well to help with the mid tones yet black and white will yield a good print
Thanks for the screen info. That's a question I should have asked earlier. I will try those mesh counts.
I printed this tonight and was very disappointed and frustrated. This is the first multi-color halftone I've done, so maybe I'm expecting too much. The first print came out pretty good, at least something I was ok with. But then the subsequent prints were too dark. There seemed to be too much black getting through. Rather than a nice detailed halftone, it looked like a really dark picture with not much detail. Here's 2 of the pics, but it's kind of hard to tell, but you can see the loss of detail especially in the sand areas. #1 is the first print.
The other thing I was disappointed in was that I still have some pink showing through, so I did not get complete coverage which I expected. But that didn't bother me as much as the dark print does.
What's causing so much black to get through the screen? I tried altering the squeegee angle and pressure, but nothing seemed to help. I'm using 230 mesh. Any ideas? Should I be using a 305 mesh?
if the first print was good and the ones after aren't then
you are pressing to hard
your mesh is to low
you have to much angle on your squegee
your squegee is to blunt
your flooding the screen
your printing the black to many times
it could be any of the above
this is how i would do it, white - flash - white - flash - black
you must make sure your white base is as smooth as you can get it as this will effect how well the half tone will turn out, you need a sharp squegee, you should be able to adjust how dark it is with the angle, it should be perfect with one pull the more pulls you do the darker it will get, and what ever you do don't flood the screen, if you are having trouble and depending on how many you are doing you could print the black on a white rag or bit of paper after each shirt to clean it out or to practice, if its perfect on the rag or paper then your white base is to ruff, you can use newspaper print your shirt print the paper and throw the paper away, and repeat. hope that helps.
You are correct since the image is cropped. If you had text above and below the picture you would need the black and white backgrounds in order to extract the black and white properly.
Here is what the seps/plates should look like based off the jpeg you posted.
hey richard, wouldn't this look better with a complete white block, no reg problems and so long as the white is smooth it should print perfect
This is what Richard was talking about, adding the grey mid tone, i did this one last week, one is the print without the grey and the other is the final print, this is just a scan of the test prints on rags but you get the idea and see how much more detail it adds.
look at the faces and the union jack shirt, the grey added heaps more detail.
Last edited by CustomScreen; July 8th, 2007 at 03:17 AM.
Reason: adding more detail
How Would You Print This? 
! If you get a chance, could you comment on my above questions... I'm about a burn the screens for this, and I'm scared I'm going to screw it up 
