[personalazeit]

Just finished a halftone print, trying to come as close as I could to the customer's original art off his business card scan. Re-created everything from scratch in Coreldraw. I've attached all images to take a look at... the coreldraw image (as a jpg) and the halftone portion that printed the film (scaled down so it may not look right, just wanted you to see it), and the final shirt! I think it looks good, but have a feeling it could be better next time. I tried really hard to not overdo the flood and print so I just got a nice thin layer of ink.

How I'm setup:

Used 160 mesh screen
Blacklight UV exposure unit with tons of weight and foam on top, slightly under exposed screen and lightly rinsed off to try to maintain halftones.
35 lpi
25 degree angle
2 Color 1 Location on a manual Riley Hopkins press (actually still started loosing registration about 10 prints in, which happens to me all the time).
(all of this found on Halftone Dots Made Easy |)

Some questions I have... could I still have had a higher lpi? That's the first time I've gone down to 35 lpi, but was following the article to the T I attached.

Critique away!

 

[kirkmansigns]

Looks good ! Something you could consider trying is a gradiated half tone... make the shading slightly lighter on top gradiated darker towards the bottom to give the illusion of a highlight. But still, a nice print. Keep practicing.

 

[BroJames]

The halftone looks fine.

 

[TYGERON]

Just finished a halftone print, trying to come as close as I could to the customer's original art off his business card scan. Re-created everything from scratch in Coreldraw. Some questions I have... could I still have had a higher lpi? That's the first time I've gone down to 35 lpi, but was following the article to the T I attached.

Critique away!

I...LOVE...YOU!!! (Wiping tears from eyes)

Tygeron is pleased.

 

[TYGERON]

And sure you could've gone to a higher lpi but the idea to screen printing halftones is to use as coarse a line count as possible and still get nice even transitions and tonal variation, and to not have to increase pressure to get sufficient coverage which increases dot gain and loss of detail and muddying in darker areas.

Was that a run-on sentence?

An homage to Hemmingway

 

[ScreenFoo]

I'd agree with every part of that very long sentence.

You can definitely get higher LPI's as well, when you're doing work that doesn't have very small highlight and shadow percentages too--I'll run 35 LPI on 125's, if the dots are between 25% and 75%, no problem. Going down to 5%, no way. But as mentioned, keep the differences in dot gain in mind going to higher frequencies...

 

[BroJames]

Although I don't really do much CMYK halftones, as I do spot halftones(for lack of a better description), I usually divide the mesh count by 4-5 which on a 120mesh count screen is about 20-30lpi. Although I prefer 5 (20lpi) I prefer 30lpi (divide by 4) because 20lpi would be too coarse. But I decide on which lpi (divide by 4 or 5) depending on the design. If I can get away with the lower lpi (divide by 5) that's what I use.