Hello,
I would like to know if anybody can give me some advice on half tone screenprinting and dot gain. I have not printed any half tone images yet, but would like any tips or recommendations if anybody has any. Many thanks.
In order to compensate for dot gain, it's common for t-shirt printers to minimize the dots in the 5% highlight area and in the 95% area.
In the highlight area the 5% dot can gain and become 10% to 15% or more if too much squeegee pressure or too coarse of a mesh is used. The shadow dots in the 95% will gain and become a solid, therefore, it is common to output your halftone films with a tight tonal range of 10% to 90%, this means there will be no dots below 10% and every dot above 90% will be solid black.
Please be aware that printing in a manual press will require more compensation than printing in an automatic press.
Hope this can help you.
Challenger
Hello,
I would like to know if anybody can give me some advice on half tone screenprinting and dot gain. I have not printed any half tone images yet, but would like any tips or recommendations if anybody has any. Many thanks.
Step 1 is to print a graduated screen. This will show you what is really happening. Once you have a gradation, then you need to calibrate your output to the reality of your print test.
The printer, exposure unit and mesh count all matter when you are printing halftones.
fred
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A day late, a dollar short, so it goes.
Fred,
How'd you make the art for the graduated screen? I was thinking of making one with different lpi's on the same positive so i could see how fine of dot i could get on a variety of meshes.
Fred,
How'd you make the art for the graduated screen? I was thinking of making one with different lpi's on the same positive so i could see how fine of dot i could get on a variety of meshes.
You should create the art using the same program and method as you plan to use to make the your production work. If you are a corel user, use corel. If you use illustrator, use illustrator or photoshop use photoshop.
The only program i know of, which allows individual objects to use different screens on the same page is freehand. Aside from that program, you will need to print different pages and gang them up on a screen to expose all of them.
fred
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A day late, a dollar short, so it goes.
Half Tone Dot Gain 
