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When setting up your press, you need to be sure that your press is in perfect working order. If your dot-gain is too large, the halftone dots will merge together to create a solid, blurred print. It’s inevitable that ink will spread when it hits the substrate, creating a larger dot than the one on the image or on the stencil. Printing Halftone ImagesĪgain, creating quality halftone images depends on laying down thin dots of ink accurately. Finally, once the screen has been exposed and rinsed out, hold it up to a light source to make sure that your halftone dots have come through cleanly and your image is accurate. Try to keep your emulsion thin, as a thicker stencil means a heavier ink deposit. You need an opaque positive that will expose accurately. Make sure you’re using a printer that is up to the task of printing accurate halftones. You’ll also want to watch your screen exposure process. This allows you to print accurately with little pressure, and it means the screen will snap neatly away from the garment after the print stroke. For halftone printing, screen tension should be at least 25 N/cm 2. For the same reason, your screens need proper tension. You risk getting a heavy deposit and an inaccurate dot. A thick thread forces you to use more pressure to push the ink through the mesh and onto the garment. You want your dot to lie down easily on your garment. The general mesh count range for printing halftones is 230 to 280, and you need a screen with thin thread. Printing in halftones requires a high mesh count screen. That means two things: Choosing the right mesh and making sure your screens are properly exposed. To print in halftones, you need to lay down a thin, precise deposit of ink. Practice makes perfect when formatting your artwork and no two jobs will be exactly alike, so do some experimenting to find what settings work best for you. Many screen printers will cut the maximum percentile in the upper 80s, as dots that are any larger can merge to create a solid image due to dot gain. For screen printing, you should set haltones to at least 6 percent, as anything smaller becomes difficult to print accurately, and to no more than 97 percent. The higher the percentage, the larger the dot will be and the more solid the image will appear. Remains the same – taking a detailed image and breaking it down to fine dots.įinally, you’ll have to set the color range of your halftones. There are many different ways to create a halftone image, but the principle While many screen printers debate the proper angle, a good starting point for those just beginning to print halftones is 25 degrees. You’ll also need to change the output angle. Most printers prefer an elliptical dot shape and choose to print between 45 lines per inch (LPI), which is suitable for most halftone images, and 65 lines per inch for photorealistic images. Before printing your film positives, you’ll need to adjust your print settings to format your image for screen printing halftones. When printing halftone images, most programs will default to print settings made for paper. If your original image isn’t high enough resolution, the edges of your halftone dots won’t be clear and precise. Halftone printing creates detailed images. That’s especially true when printing halftones. You know that to screen print great images, you need to start with great artwork. Formatting Your Artwork for Halftone Printing To print great halftone images, you start with quality artwork, formatted properly for screen printing expose a solid stencil on the right type of screen and employ printing techniques that lay down precise dots of ink to create your halftone image. It’s true that screen printing halftones can be a challenge, but taking time to learn to print halftones right can have you creating prints that wow your customers and help you attract new business.Īs with most screen printing techniques, halftone printing involves carefully following the steps and putting some quality control in place. Halftone printing can open up new opportunities for finely detailed, photorealistic screen prints.