screen printing > Separations

Why 600ppi instead of 300?

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Dottonedan:
I can relate. Understood.

zanegun08:
I was going to reply in a previous thread but I didn't hit post since the other post was in relation to scaling halftones after creation, but in summary, I don't think achieving a perfect circle has much to do with your final print, it's more that the value of color is showing correctly.

The 300 vs 600 gets you a better shape in photoshop yes, but then how that translate to your film / CTS, then to Emulsion / Mesh, and then Ink to Shirt you won't see a noticeable difference in my opinion unless maybe looking under a microscope at the shape of the dot which means nothing.

I think you could have banana shaped halftones, or poop emoji, and if it translates the correct amount of value to your substrate from a normal viewing distance the effects will not be distinguishable to 95% of the population.  Also, majority of images that need halftone works are photographic, if you are just upscaling a 72 PPI image to 600 PPI, you aren't gaining any resolution.  So yes, better circles on the computer, but does that actually translate to better prints if the source image didn't already have that information.

More time should be spent for better separations, knowing your dot gain and creating tone curves to compensate for that average, better inks, knowing that your printer is going to just mash out the pressure.  A perfect circle means nothing to me when it has to go through a square mesh anyhow. 

Sure higher PPI is better in a lab, but I think of people in India on table top presses with loose mesh screens and no automatic presses putting out great looking work, and it brings me back to the real world

Dottonedan:
Ditto.

I agree totally. The only real area were high rez above 1200dpi really benefits is in the ability to represent the small dots (more accurately) than a 600 or 1200 would.
THIS area of question is in the extreme ranges o shadows and highlights.  At a low 600, that rez cannot produce the full dot needed to make the correct tonal %. That is not about "shape" but is all about content. Those dots do not contain enough structure to correctly account of a 3% dot. It can't. So, as you do go up in rez, you get more accurate tones in the shadows and highlights.

Consider this.
Most thought that the 600dpi or even the 1200dpi WAX machines were kicking out superior dots. "They look more rounded". I agree. More so than wet ink.
But, when you consider the 2540 rez, of a Laser. It's near dead on exact. If I gave the laser machine a 600dpi 1 bit tif file, to produce (at any of it's levels of DPI output, It would produce a more exact representation of that 600dpi dot shape. That being of a dot made up of 3-4-6 pixel grid squares. Same thing at 1200dpi 1 bit tif files.  It's able to reproduce the tif exactly as the source file with hard, sharp vertical emulsion walls. When you look at these small dots of the WAX ink at 600 or 1200, It's not. It' can't produce that shape "correctly".  Yes, it looks rounded, but that is not due to the WAX RIP or printer. A 600dpi 1 bit tif is a 600dpi 1 bit tif . The "roundness" shaped like a meteor, you get is due to the inability to produce that exact shape because it's WAX and not a laser or a wet ink.  It's for this reason of the inability, that the wax dot actually looks good to us like we can use it better than the 3-4 pixel squares. I am believing that the 1200dpi WAX, is not better than the 600dpi WAX. That's all sort of another offshoot of your topic. 

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