Gradients in Illustrator CS4

[ZooCity]

Why do they suck so bad?

Maybe I'm just stupid on this but they're always all banded and crappy with a real sharp "break" somewhere in the gradient no matter how much you eff with it in the gradient panel and, seemingly no matter how high you set the ppi for raster effects. 

And outputting them as spot colors to the rip...boo, hiss.  (I do have a tech help request in to Charlie at Accurip regarding this, hope to clear it up next week)

I'd love to hear what other designers and pre-press folks are doing with these.   Right now illy gradients are shitting on my parade. 

[blue moon]

which printer are you using for the film output? Are you seeing banding on the screen?
If you just create a 2x2 square and run the gradient from 0 to 100 do you see banding in it (on something as simple as this)?

The Film maker does produce significantly cleaner transition than the AR, but AR's gradients were perfectly acceptable for me (Illy CS4 and Epson 3000 and 1400). The transitions were not detectable by naked eye, 'just that when you put the two films side by side FM looks cleaner.

If the break is on the film only, it could be caused by the dot shape. Round dots create a break when they merge. I don't think this is the case for you, but I am throwing it out anyways (better safe than sorry).
If you run the 0-100% how many bans do you see? At what percentages?

[squeezee]

The gradient shouldn't be a raster effect?  That would give you problems.

[Sbrem]

Why do they suck so bad?

Maybe I'm just stupid on this but they're always all banded and crappy with a real sharp "break" somewhere in the gradient no matter how much you eff with it in the gradient panel and, seemingly no matter how high you set the ppi for raster effects. 

And outputting them as spot colors to the rip...boo, hiss.  (I do have a tech help request in to Charlie at Accurip regarding this, hope to clear it up next week)

I'd love to hear what other designers and pre-press folks are doing with these.   Right now illy gradients are shitting on my parade.

We do what you're trying to do all day long, and output to AR on a 1400. Maybe you could post a problem file for us to check out. It shouldn't be giving you this kind of trouble. Are you creating your gradients with spot colors?

Steve

[squeezee]

Try the compatible gradient printing in Preferences.

[Dottonedan]

The only time I have ever ran into a banding issue on my gradients was due to a very low (too far low0 setting for my (PRINTER) resolution setting. This is more about your printers output set up and not in Illustrator.

[ZooCity]

Here's the file, sans some of the top art for client confidentiality.   How's this look compared to what you all see?  Sorry, had to zip it to get it to attach. 

Pierre, the "banding" is just something I notice on screen.  It looks like Illy creates gradients, for example radial gradients, by using concentric vector-defined rings.  Seems like if you could set it to have a higher "sampling" or whatever it would solve the problem.  My problem is that no matter how I adjust the gradient controls there's always a break point that gets translated, upon output, to a much more obvious problem and really detracts from the ability to print a truly smooth gradient despite proper gain compensation both on output and on-press.  No troubles like this with raster gradients out of photoshop. 

[Dottonedan]

Here's some info.  Go to the TOP menu bar and clink on HELP. then search under  Banding Gradients.

I exaggerated the banding here by adjusting the levels in photoshop from my screen shot.  Is your printer set up for postscript level 3?  it improves this apparently but postscript 2 has options.  Typically, it's not a problem for most but I'd guess that's because most gradients in art are not that large. It shouldn't really have an effect but I guess it does otherwise they wouldn't have dedicated any help guides for it. It must be the (SIZE) of this gradient in terms of width.

[Sbrem]

looks nice on screen, but heavy banding when printed. I did notice however, that your gradient is made up of one RGB color, the gold, and the white is CMYK. I created my own oval in a new page, used the gradient pallet to look like yours, and it printed cleanly. You might want to try the blend tool instead of the gradient. One big gold oval, one small white one centered in front of the gold one, then blend. Good luck, I can see how that would drive you crazy.

Steve

[blue moon]

I just printed it out and there is one very faint band (you have to look at the film on an angle to see it), but otherwise it looks good.

the banding is visible on the screen though, it is faint, but it is there.  My RIP also has a pretty abrupt transition from halftone to solid coverage, but that is just an adjustment I have to make in the settings.
The preview in the RIP though looks like nothing I have seen before, some funky stuff going on there. There are tons of bubbles, I wonder if those are causing any issues?

[ZooCity]

Thank you all for checking out the file output, that's more than I would ever expect from my printing comrades!  I owe you guys.   

 I did just a little digging around on adobe forums and this banding in illy appears to be an inherent problem here but everything has its limitations I suppose.  My co-worker and I brainstormed some far-out concepts on how to overcome this potentially with a hybridized vector/raster object, I'll try and post about that later and maybe also on adobe forums when I can find a minute...as for now I need to get this job out.

I checked and we are outputting @ level 3 postscript. 

So I was able to setup the gold v. white in a rosette pattern by turning off "lock screens" in accurip and setting my lpi and angles in illustrator.  22.5 on gold and 83 on white, as per Murakami's guide to avoiding moire on S mesh, which is available on their site here, if anyone hasn't checked this out yet:

http://www.murakamiscreen.com/tools_screen_room_designs.html

It setup a respectable rosette as opposed to the stacking of the dots.  I think, with the white underbase we can get 'er done with these films provided I can get the white to crush up with the gold enough on press.  We'll see, I'll report back tomorrow.


(I adjusted the link).
Dot-Tone

[ZooCity]

Well here she is.  Thought I'd post up while I take a smoke break before finishing the backs (a one hit, one color, soft hand print, praise jebus). 

All screens @ 55lpi.  Shut off "lock screens" in Accurip.  Set my own angles in Illy and PS print dialogues.  Wilflex Epic Quick White and QMX 136c. 70/90/70 blades.

UB WHITE - 150/48 @ 24n 2/1 round coat, 60something degrees (can't remember off top of my head)
FLASH
WET/HILITE WHITE - 150/48 @ 24n 2/1 round coat, 83degrees
136c - 225/40 @ 26n 2/1 thin coat, 83degrees
FLASH
*then I pulled them back around and hit the print with that trick Colin described with a "blank" 150s screen and some clear to
  flatten out the fill on the corners and take the edge off the white

The wet white should've been a 225s or probably higher but it's all I had on hand and good lord I wanted to get this one done.

Still troubleshooting both the banding and the stacked dots ouput issues, this was a band-aid workaround.  It would've looked much cleaner if those damn dots were interlocking.

[blue moon]

that looks pretty good!

Can we get a close up?

[ZooCity]

oh and these were on Tultex blends, like the tri-blend but 65% poly, 35% cotton and thin as all get out.  fun.  test print on solid cotton looked much smoother. 

Thanks again to all for the help with this, I'm slammed for the rest of the week but am going to dig into the gradient/output issue and report back. 

[Dottonedan]

Looks great as is. Sure it could be gooder, (for Frog) but this is pretty derned good.

Thanks for the follow up by the way. Very nice of you.