I have a graphic that is solid black. It has white in highlights of it. It is of a cowboy riding a horse. The t-shirt vendor wants a halftone of this graphic, but I have no idea how to make one to send to them.
You can find a picture of the horse and rider I'm talking about by scrolling down a bit at Printable Northwestern Logos
I've tried reading through information posted using various methods mentioned to create a halftone, but about all I get to show on my screen with most are a few dots around the areas where the black and white parts meet with no dots appearing in the black area.
What do I need to do to do to turn this graphic into a halftone so it can be emailed to the vendor? It is going to printed on a shirt with words in the same color to be printed over the top of it.
I use Corel Draw and Photoshop mostly but have Illustrator as well.
Why does the vendor need a halftone? The image is solid black & white, no gradients or anything like that - that's why you're not getting any halftone dots in the black.
I totally agree there is no need for a halftone as it is solid areas of color with no fades. It is a two color spot job if you want the white and a one color job if you just want the black.
another t-shirt vendor made the horse into a halftone so it could be printed under the words to our school's fight song. I don't know how they did it either, but it's definitely a halftone because it has several dots in it. The shirt is just a one-color printing, so the halftone was created to make the horse "appear" to be lighter without having to use a second color. Just looking for how they might have accomplished that. The group printing the shirt changed vendors so I sent the same art to them, but apparently they don't know what to do to get it to work either.
The shirt is just a one-color printing, so the halftone was created to make the horse "appear" to be lighter without having to use a second color.
Going with a second color is probably the best solution. The ink can actually be gray, rather than tinting black back 75%. At the LPI most screen printing is done, the a 25% tint of black will have dots visible from 3' away. By printing the same area with a 25% gray ink, the image will look smooth and gray, not black and white.
If you are printing on a white shirt, it may not make any difference. The shirt will absorb and spread the ink to somewhat hide the dots. On any color shirt besides white, a white would need to be printed, then the halftone, where a high pigment gray ink could be printed directly on a shirt.
Printing an extra color can cost an extra buck a shirt, so if you are looking for cheapest, you probably would want to try a 45LPI screen. You probably would use photoshop to create the halftone. (menu command) Image->mode->bitmap... (dialog window) resolution needs to match the printer and the method is halftone screen.
fred
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You can also use the "EFFECTS>PIXELATE>COLOR HALFTONE..." function in Illustrator if you're working with a vector image. Make the image a spot black and reduce the % to what you want, then use the color halftone effect and enter the max diameter and the channel angles you want.
another t-shirt vendor made the horse into a halftone so it could be printed under the words to our school's fight song. I don't know how they did it either, but it's definitely a halftone because it has several dots in it. The shirt is just a one-color printing, so the halftone was created to make the horse "appear" to be lighter without having to use a second color. Just looking for how they might have accomplished that. The group printing the shirt changed vendors so I sent the same art to them, but apparently they don't know what to do to get it to work either.
When the printer prints the films they should be able to just print halftones. For the artwork, just make it a percentage of the color. When your printer outputs the film using a RIP or postscript enabled output device it should come out as a halftone in my experience.
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Reduce 50% opacity, then bitmap it in halftone.
... or just send to the printer with the 50% reduced opacity on the logo and tell him to output the film in halftone... I recommend making the artwork at a larger size to better accomodate the halftone dots.
Thank you to everyone for your help. I did not know that it would be OK to use gray or reduce opacity to make it work. I was afraid if I made it lighter, that would add a second color to our print job, and we only wanted one. Doing what you suggested worked like a charm, and I really appreciate it.
Creating a Halftone to send to t-shirt vendor 
