accurip help!

[daria]

Hi,
I bought the black max pack with accurip for my epson 1430 and at first it worked great, but recently i have been having a few problems and I can't figure out what is causing them.

First is I am not creating half tones, but fine detailed line work for printing on paper, so the films need to be crisp, but about 1 out of every 5 times I print a film it is half-toned at about 95% solid, for line work these become fuzzy edged and unusable. The photo shop files I'm using are at 100% black and I haven't adjusted anything that I can find to create this half tone so I'm not sure what is causing this.

Second thing that has been happening recently is that at 400dpi I am getting pixelated prints on my film. When I first started using this system 400dpi made smooth unpixelated prints, again I'm not sure what has changed and where the problem is coming from.  It's possible the grittiness of the line quality isn't actual pixelation, the lines appear almost slightly wiggly or something.

Any help or settings advice would be much appreciated. I really don't know anything about accurip because the package I bought didn't come with any kind of user manual for the program.

Thanks a bunch!

Daria

[aauusa]

I am not sure if this would help but try adjusting the droplet weight.  the higher the number the more ink is deposited  I have a r1800 and have mine set a 3 droplet weight but.

[JBLUE]

Can you post a pic of what you used to get out of PS and what you are getting now?

[aauusa]

I have a pic of a test print below.  It has some small text so you can see the clarity of the smaller lines.  Also you might want to check you output resolution in the accrip setup  i have mine set at 1440-1440
I am a printer no a photographer so the pic is not the best but it is very clear in person.

[JBLUE]

Is that source file you just posted a pic from PS or is it a vector file? If it is PS what DPI is it at? Its hard to see the edges because of the blur.

[daria]

my droplet weight is set at 10, maybe that is too high? i may be using my ink cartiridges faster than need be. but that droplet weight was working fine for me at first. i don't have scans of my good films vs bad films but maybe I can do that later today so folks can see, its kind of a subtle difference but enough to make a bad line quality on the detail of my keys and makes my screens (255 mesh) burn with thicker lines and less detail. i  just upped the output resolution on accurip to 1440x 720 dpi (for some reason 1440x1440 wasn't an option, maybe that is dependent on what printer you have?) that photo does look like you have a great crisp edges, that's what i want!
JBLUE if you were asking me about my resolution, i am using 400dpi files in photoshop. i don't use vector files.

thanks for all the feedback, everyone on this forum has been very helpful whenever I have questions!

[JBLUE]

I always work at 600 dpi for fine detail. Its overkill for most but we use a lot of high mesh here as well and hold detail like you would not believe. Once it is on a shirt you really cant tell but if ir is on hard goods it shows right up.

[blue moon]

not sure if this applies, but check your color correction in the Photoshop Print output. Make sure it is set for none!

pierre

[screenxpress]

How about posting a file to take a look at?

[Sbrem]

Is your Photoshop image in Bitmap mode? It is, you should not get a halftone at all. If the image is all solid blacks, then converting to Bitmap under the Image menu should make no difference in what it looks like, and at 600 PPI (pixels per inch for PS images, DPI is for printers, though just about everybody interchanges them) they should print out clean and smooth. If you're getting a halftone, there is some gray, or haze in the image. Conversion to Bitmap with 600 PPI output resolution at the minimum will give clean sharp images at the finished size... hope this helps.

Steve