printigng old photos on t shirts

[rmonks]

I have a family reunion coming up, and I have taken an old black and white photo converted it to grey scale bitmap , made a film , made a screen, and printed a shirt, it looked great, the next shirt was darker and so on. I know it is a dot gain thing. How can I improve the picture quality

[tonypep]

There are several ways, depending a lot about the original photo quality. That said I never try to replicate a B&W phot with one screen. Three or four will render a more balanced image with good contrast and mid tones.

[Sbrem]

ditto what Tony says. Your inks won't produce enough dynamic range, so your prints will get muddy. Even with at least 2 screens, where the second screen is only the darkest parts of the image, will increase the depth. You also need to back down the image using curves (or levels, but I prefer curves, a bit more control). I'll bet some of artists like Scott, ArtElf or Dot-Tone Dan may have an extra trick up their sleeves...

Steve

[blue moon]

ditto what Tony says. Your inks won't produce enough dynamic range, so your prints will get muddy. Even with at least 2 screens, where the second screen is only the darkest parts of the image, will increase the depth. You also need to back down the image using curves (or levels, but I prefer curves, a bit more control). I'll bet some of artists like Scott, ArtElf or Dot-Tone Dan may have an extra trick up their sleeves...

Steve

it can be done with one screen, but you really should adjust for the dot gain on the press. If you are going to do that, use the curves and cut your middle section in about half. This will allow you to stroke twice so you can get deep blacks and still not get to much gain. A better option is to use two or even more screens. There are several ways to do it, one involves two colors and the other is the same color twice. Printing on white shirt you would use a gray and a black for the first case. This will give you a good range of colors/contrast. The other one is two black screens. Use a 305 with all the halftone on it and a 160 for the second one with just the solid black areas (using the curves remove all the halftones from this screen).

We do a rally nice print in sepiatone that is a crisp as a poster, but it does take 6 colors. There is something similar in the gallery, look up the eliot ness print.

just my $0.02 worth . . . not sure I would pay that much for it, so I guess it's not even worth that much.

pierre

EDIT: ness is not in the gallery, sorry. Laura fedor was four colors I think, maybe five. . . She is in there.

[Sbrem]

I did some posterized prints back in the late 70's, and would use 6 shades of gray, or 5 and black rather. That was where I picked up the idea of doing it with halftones as well, even with just 2 blacks. It simply increases the tonal range of the print. With a face, the first color down had it all, the second screen just had the pupils of the eyes, nostrils, corners of the mouth and the like, only the very darkest part of the image. And Pierre, I'd give at least 3 cents for any info you wanted to impart...

Steve

[Frog]

And Pierre, I'd give at least 3 cents for any info you wanted to impart...

Steve

To raise money for upgrades, we may well auction off Pierre's advice.

Do I hear 4 cents?