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screen printing => Tips and Tricks to Share (Please don't ask questions here) => Topic started by: Screened Gear on June 16, 2011, 12:57:29 AM
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Do you do a lot of one color jobs? This is a great way to make them a little more interesting. Use "line" instead of dots for your half tones. This isn't the best example but you can see that the lighter areas are all made up of lines. It’s all done in the RIP so it’s easy to do. Just pick line instead of dot or ellipse. You can pick the angle the lines will run and the LPI of the lines. The LPI does not adjust the line thickness as much as it does with dot or ellipse.
If you have used "line" post your shirts as examples.
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Do you do a lot of one color jobs? This is a great way to make them a little more interesting. Use "line" instead of dots for your half tones. This isn't the best example but you can see that the lighter areas are all made up of lines. It’s all done in the RIP so it’s easy to do. Just pick line instead of dot or ellipse. You can pick the angle the lines will run and the LPI of the lines. The LPI does not adjust the line thickness as much as it does with dot or ellipse.
If you have used "line" post your shirts as examples.
A point for artists and printers “out in the wild” you can use any dot, kinda-dot (Stochastic) or no dot (posterization - yech) and each will give a specific “look and feeling” to the print.
Try Andy Warhol type comic giant dots, diffusion dither, or hatching/cross hatching.
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for really large dots that are perfectly round, try a program called rasterbator. It's wicked cool!
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I'm with ya 100%. We need to think of different ways to present our work. Just about everything has been done before but what was old is now new and what was new is now old. :)
I did this in Photoshop using the Grayscale/bitmap/line screen mode. I played with various resolutions until I got something I wanted then saved as a psd and pasted into Illustrator and did a LIVE TRACE to convert to vector. The same was applied to that background type (the yellow graphics behind the orange type).
(http://www.dot-tone.com/graphics/images/stories/portfolio/tennis-camp-vector-3colors.jpg)
(http://www.dot-tone.com/graphics/images/stories/portfolio/tennis%20camp-vector-3colors-very%20large.jpg)
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Halftone dots are NEW school. Before the invention of the halftone screen, woodcuts and engravings used for printing used hatching and cross-hatching. This is a high-tech throwback!
Back in my pre-digital days, I'd use X-acto strokes on black film to do seps that looked like scratchboards or woodcuts.
Oh yeah, and an airbrush filled with india ink with the pressure set WAY low would produce a nice random dot pattern on film or Rubylith.
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I do like lines, they give really tight rosettes.
I think of lines as halftone dots, they are just extremely elliptical.
One of the problems that they have is that the thinner lines tend to fall off the screen and just pull the rest of the line with it. We have a dot shape that is round/elliptical in the highlights, that becomes a line at higher tones, so if you lose the samller dots the damage is contained.
2p worth.
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before we used airbrushes to splatter a random dot kind of ( Mezzotint) we used to use a technical pen and Stipple each dot :-O
In the early days of screen printing any texture would work.....
Be creative! here I took it a step further..
Circa 2008 I used a line halftone... then Tinted them with a screened elliptical dot. getting different tones to the lines in each of only two inks.(http://tshirtillustrator.com/images/baseline.jpg)
See how the nose is a percentage of the chocolate dog in front. this is a two color print!
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here is a screen capture of my production file incase you misunderstood. the illustration was saved as a line-tone... Bot positive and negative, with Custom midrange for the shirt.
These where then filled with only a percentage of the spot color... In this pick Pink is white.(http://tshirtillustrator.com/images/screenbase.png)
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before we used airbrushes to splatter a random dot kind of ( Mezzotint) we used to use a technical pen and Stipple each dot :-O
Yep, did a lot of that too, but honestly I hate to stipple. Lines are so much more satisfying to draw.
Right before the meaty part of the digital revolution... mid '90s... a buddy of mine (Ronko) invented a "stipple mouse" that you would screw a Rapidograph into and, hooking up to the central compressed-air supply our art dept. had for airbrushes (Maiden West, Dave), it would stipple at the push of a button. You controlled the speed with a small dial. It was genius.
BTW that basset art is killer!
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yeah @ Ocean Pacific Images, Denver, in the eighties we used an AB Pashe Turbo, turned all the way down on pressure and cracked the tip on porpose... then they came out with the splatter tip....
I used to just airbrush or pencil it then shoot it into a mezzo or line tint on the stat camera! Lot faster....
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been using that for years, and you're right, it's a great way to punch up one color work. As Scott mentioned, it is older school than halftones though. I had some software back in the late nineties that automated these effects, but damned if I can remember the name.
Steve
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...I am glad this came up. I have Corel X4, and am wondering how I can show or simulate the actual halftone dot (or hatch or line or whatever) pattern within the file. I would like to do some designs with the "coarse halftone look" that is kinda hot again.
...kinda similar to whats goin on in this example...
http://image.yaymicro.com/rz_1210x1210/0/444/vector-grunge-bike-background-444394.jpg (http://image.yaymicro.com/rz_1210x1210/0/444/vector-grunge-bike-background-444394.jpg)
...anybody shed some light?
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Oh yea? Well, I am so old school that we didn't even have paint invented yet. We had to cut our finger tips with an arrow head and squeeze the blood out and fling it on the cave wall until we got a good image. Sure, you got light headed after a while but those were the days.
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...I am glad this came up. I have Corel X4, and am wondering how I can show or simulate the actual halftone dot (or hatch or line or whatever) pattern within the file. I would like to do some designs with the "coarse halftone look" that is kinda hot again.
...kinda similar to whats goin on in this example...
[url]http://image.yaymicro.com/rz_1210x1210/0/444/vector-grunge-bike-background-444394.jpg[/url] ([url]http://image.yaymicro.com/rz_1210x1210/0/444/vector-grunge-bike-background-444394.jpg[/url])
...anybody shed some light?
In Photoshop (if you have photoshop) convert any color image/shape/gradation to Grayscale. I think it requires the image be a grayscale in order to convert to bitmap. Then choose a resolution that will present very charp clean edges like 300 minimum but if I am taking it into Illustrator to convert to vector, I will double the physical size and make sure the resolution is high like 300 when I do bring it in. Then convert to vector paths to get clean conversions.
So, choose resolution, Then use HALFTONE under METHOD.
Then choose the frequency, angle and halftone "shape". Use a low frequentcy to obtain LAERGE dots. I like 1-3 at 300 rez for example.
Under SHAPE, is where I created the LINE tone for my tennis ball and blurry type background.
line screen mode. I played with various resolutions until I got something I wanted then saved as a psd and pasted into Illustrator and did a LIVE TRACE to convert to vector.[/quote]
At this point, you can play a little and by going back and fourth by saving copies to decide what shape, resolution and size you prefer. I sometimes lower the rezolution to get BIGGER effects.
There was a nice filter plugin sold for about 30.00 but the name slipped my mind. It's on the tip of my tongue. If I remember, I'll give it a plug. It was pretty good for converting images to a wood cut effect. I want to say it was made by ambrosia but not sure. A google search pulls up a few.
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I'm so old school we had to squish the amiba next to us in the primatial soup LOL :-P
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for what it is worth here are some interesting opportunities with almost any shape including yes dots.
http://www.vecteezy.com/blog/9-how-to-make-vector-halftone-gradients (http://www.vecteezy.com/blog/9-how-to-make-vector-halftone-gradients)
mooseman
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Yes with photoshop you can load any graphic as the halftone. I think I actual used Dan Campbell's face as each dot on one of the old forums. so rather then just doing a graphic shape or gradient you can do halftones.
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for what it is worth here are some interesting opportunities with almost any shape including yes dots.
[url]http://www.vecteezy.com/blog/9-how-to-make-vector-halftone-gradients[/url] ([url]http://www.vecteezy.com/blog/9-how-to-make-vector-halftone-gradients[/url])
mooseman
very nice link, worth checking out. Thanx!
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Boy...you guys are really old.
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Boy...you guys are really old.
The alternative sucks.
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Boy...you guys are really old.
Would this be the pot calling the kettle black?
I seem to remember that our beloved Mr. Breeze, is older than yours truly, who ain't no spring chicken.
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Anybody here old enough to remember the term "Ben-Day dot"?
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Anybody here old enough to remember the term "Ben-Day dot"?
Yup. Kind of like the stuff you see in a Roy Lichtenstein painting . . . not halftones but tints.
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Yup! My first art job was at a phone directory company... very primitive 2-color printing. Ben-Day was the only kind of dot pattern they could do.
One salesman would specify in his orders "E-Tone Ben-Day." We made up a "Paul Simon/Ladysmith Black-Mambazo" - sounding song we'd sing every time one of us got one of those orders.
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Anybody here old enough to remember the term "Ben-Day dot"?
Yup. Kind of like the stuff you see in a Roy Lichtenstein painting . . . not halftones but tints.
A great example.
Does anyone else think that the old adhesive sheets of “halftone dots” cut into shapes for seps could be part of the problem with the generic (now) term “halftone?”
Long ago I remember having to cut out the adhesive sheets and placing them carefully on keyline drawings then overlaying more on the secondary mylar sheets and then making camera shots because the density of the adhesive sheets was pathetic. I remember some jobs taking all day to cut ruby and the adhesive sheets, I don’t even remember the name brand of the sheets anymore.
A job that would take 4 or more hours now takes about 3 min. in Illustrator.
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Anybody here old enough to remember the term "Ben-Day dot"?
Yup. Kind of like the stuff you see in a Roy Lichtenstein painting . . . not halftones but tints.
A great example.
Does anyone else think that the old adhesive sheets of “halftone dots” cut into shapes for seps could be part of the problem with the generic (now) term “halftone?”
Long ago I remember having to cut out the adhesive sheets and placing them carefully on keyline drawings then overlaying more on the secondary mylar sheets and then making camera shots because the density of the adhesive sheets was pathetic. I remember some jobs taking all day to cut ruby and the adhesive sheets, I don’t even remember the name brand of the sheets anymore.
A job that would take 4 or more hours now takes about 3 min. in Illustrator.
Cleaning out my office, I recently found some. Zipatone, Letraset, and Formatt were some of the brand names. I threw them away, but hung on to some of the Letraset type sheets for some reason.
They were spendy, brittle and yes, semi-translucent, so we'd make shots of them on adhesive-backed stat film. I remember getting fancy with rosettes when mixing colors.
A job that would take 3 min. in Illustrator now takes 30 seconds in Photoshop. ;)
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Oh yeah, Chartpak was another.
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C-Thru and Formatt
btw, Command, Andy's went through thousands of sheets of 7279 55 line fades, often throwing away half of the remaining sheet.
Ask me how I know.
Is there such a thing as a packfrog?
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C-Thru and Formatt
btw, Command, Andy's went through thousands of sheets of 7279 55 line fades, often throwing away half of the remaining sheet.
Ask me how I know.
Is there such a thing as a packfrog?
Haha... you're a hoardy toad.
Time to let go.
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C-Thru and Formatt
btw, Command, Andy's went through thousands of sheets of 7279 55 line fades, often throwing away half of the remaining sheet.
Ask me how I know.
Is there such a thing as a packfrog?
Haha... you're a hoardy toad.
Time to let go.
but some of those letter packs are brand new and sealed. Another few years, and I'll make a killing on ebay!
Time for a story.
Back in the late '80's, I used to get C-Thru rub off letters at Kinko's.
On day, no more letters!
WTF? What now I asked?
"You can rent one of our computers and set your type the new way!" Computers? says I?
So, on the way to the "day job" at Andy's, at 7:00, I'd stop in at Kinko's at 5:30 or 6:00 when the clerk had a little time to show me how to "compute" and a lot of showing me where my stuff went when I moved the cursor too far. When he was busy with another customer, all I could think about were the rental minutes ticking away. But type, and type set I did, then it was cut and paste to make camera copy.
So, I can honestly say that I started out as a Mac guy! lol!
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A job that would take 3 min. in Illustrator now takes 30 seconds in Photoshop. ;)
That depends on what you are doing - one of the big problems out there is judging what program to use for the end result.
Care to use photoshop for 300 high school names on the back of a graduation shirt? :o
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"You can rent one of our computers and set your type the new way!" Computers? says I?
So, on the way to the "day job" at Andy's, at 7:00, I'd stop in at Kinko's at 5:30 or 6:00 when the clerk had a little time to show me how to "compute" and a lot of showing me where my stuff went when I moved the cursor too far. When he was busy with another customer, all I could think about were the rental minutes ticking away. But type, and type set I did, then it was cut and paste to make camera copy.
So, I can honestly say that I started out as a Mac guy! lol!
I had a Mac, but no printer. Late night runs to Kinko's to run off a laser print from a Mac Plus. I used to take my fonts along and a disk with the font downloader and download the fonts I'd used in Pagemaker onto their printer so I could get what I needed. The place I bought my first Mac also had a film imagesetter in an adjacent section, and you could bring your disk in, rent a machine in 15 minute increments, and output negs or film and paper positives. It was handy as hell while it lasted.
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A job that would take 3 min. in Illustrator now takes 30 seconds in Photoshop. ;)
That depends on what you are doing - one of the big problems out there is judging what program to use for the end result.
Care to use photoshop for 300 high school names on the back of a graduation shirt? :o
I guess my main point there is that I hate Illustrator's Gradient Tool. I can make a selection and swipe the airbrush with my stylus pen and shade an object much faster than trying to get that Illy tool to give me the gradient colors and angle that I want. Gradient Mesh is the same... too mechanical, while raster painting is more natural, more like real-world painting or airbrushing. (I do mostly high-end illustration these days. Drafting in Illustrator, painting and sep in PS).
If I did more basic vector-based t-shirt graphics, like class names, (especially inside a number), honestly, it's one instance I think I'd prefer Corel Draw over Illy. Draw's type editing tools are way more suited for stuff like that. (Been there, done that... I've used both, that's just my opinion).
But now look. I've changed the direction of this thread. Sorry, I didn't mean to make it a software-fanboy discussion. :-X