# i suck at halftones



## hellah fresh (Feb 26, 2009)

Hello! I been trying to get this halftone down for some designs and for some reason i can not achieve the smooth and clean look of my halftones. Can someone please tell me what i am doing wrong? So i am just using an example of my halftone that im getting. So below i have a few pictures. I am trying to get a clean halfone of Marilynn M but this is how mine is coming out. The dots are kinda bold and isnt how i want them to be. 

Now the tshirt below the graphic is made out of halftones. Notice not so big and blotchy dots. So what do i need to do to get the clean picture halftone down?

What i have been doing is blowing up a picture to 1200X**** from its original size. THe program i am currently using is paint shop pro. I know alot of people will be telling me to use illustrator but its going to take me awhile to learn that and i dont want to do that at them moment but only if thats the last straw i need to get my designs nicer. Also the printer i am using is the epson 3800. So please tell me what i am doing wrong. Also on Pshop Pro when i convort my pictures to halftones... it doesnt offer me dpi. But if it do have that then i cannot find it. HELP!
































BTW: the shirt with the girl licking the diamond... that shirt is also screen printed... and i see at the shadow of her hands they used halftones. how can i make that?


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## macmiller (Jul 23, 2007)

halftones are usually done in the printer (if post script) or a RIP. It's not normally done in the program itself. 
If you want to do it in the program, you need to make the linescreen the same as it would be if printed w/ a PS printer or thru a RIP, about 40-55 LPI. That will most likely look like crap on the monitor, but when printed onto the film, the dots will be about the right size to be screen printed and look smooth.


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## mrvixx (Jan 13, 2009)

higher lpi on your dots


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## PositiveDave (Dec 1, 2008)

Halftones are a Postscript function, your printer is not a Postscript printer, you will need a Postscript interpreter such as a RIP to convert the data.
You can do it in applications such as Photoshop or Illustrator but you need a bit of technical nous to get it right.


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## out da box (May 1, 2007)

THe reason why the printed samples you showed look so good is that it's not simple a black and white halftone, they probably used a white, black, and 1 or two greys plus red, pink and maybe two blue shades.
With black and white portraits, to make them really look smooth in the flesh tones, you have to use some grey and or black to smooth out the gradients.


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## hellah fresh (Feb 26, 2009)

What is LPI and RIP? Since i cannot make nice halftones on Paint Shop Pro 9... how will i do it on my printer? Or do i just need to get Adobe Illustrator or Corel Draw?


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## bebo (Aug 11, 2008)

get an adobe photoshop you can get a nice halftone by changing your image into bitmap, and look for some tutorial about halftone in youtube


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## Spot_Worker (Oct 22, 2008)

LPI or Lines Per Inch. bigger the number smaller the dot, but higher the mesh screen. RIP is an add on program to help with the dot making and other things. In photo shop and others, RIP you can tell the printer to print a dot(of the lpi number size) for the 65% gray. hope this helps some.


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## hellah fresh (Feb 26, 2009)

Ok i am going to reinstall Adobe Illustrator and also Corel draw tonight and see how that will go. Also im going to see if there is an option for the LPI on my psp9. So there is Dpi and Lpi?


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## Art_Director (Oct 24, 2007)

Halftones can be a tricky lot. The first part of my career (in the olden days) I was a Graphic Arts Cameraman. At one time it was considered to be the second most technical profession besides a brain surgeon. Thank GOD the inkjet printer (PC/software) was developed, no more 8+ hours in the darkroom - under virtually no light (Color seps). You needed thousands of dollars of pre-angled screens, tints 10% to 90% film overlays, then pull off sometimes 200 or more pieces of film to do the final (CMYK) films for platemaking.

We had to also closely monitor film developer chemicals, temperatures, silver recovery systems, film reclaiming - not to mention our own health (number 1 issue). So that said the number 1 technique was to see how far the dots fall off. The fall off is caused by the fuzzy edges of the actual dot where the light source will blow through. You need to get a loupe, which is a magnifying glass supported in a metal frame used to make sure its at the same distance from the film. You hold the loupe on the film hovering over a light table. with your hand on the bottom side of the film you move a fingere back and forth about a half of an inch away from the film, you'll see exactly how much the fuzzyness of the dot will blow off from the light source.

Another factor is a term called emulsion up and emusion down. The dot are on which side of the film. Right reading or wrong reading? Software would call it a mirrored image.

Then how much gain or loss is there during the screen exposure? Did the dots get bigger or smaller - via over exposure? What type of light source being used.

The samples of the hot chick may have taken that shop months to perfect.

Keep a journal - get some type of exposure tools (test strip concept) and make sure you consistanly follow your experiments. (test strip image concept) make several of your images on the same scren as a gang with moe and less dot gin on the inkjet images.

Dots can only be controlled thru software. What type of a dot is also a consideation (shape). The software can be $500 to do a dot correctly - outside of your image manipulation program.


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## hellah fresh (Feb 26, 2009)

Wow all that long hard hours and foward to now they have some programs making it a little bit easier. I been experimenting with a clean halftone look but the only thing i remember about halftoning is what i was taught in HS and that was back in 2000. I just remembered the teacher telling me to halftone my image in order for the image to show up with the details. Other then that i have lost it. So outside the paint program there is a differ way to get the halftones? Im still a noob as you see but i know how to print solod colors. People say the smaller the dots the finer the mesh screen has to be so giving the pictures of the shirts with the nice prints i would have to go 300mesh or would 280 mesh work with the halftone. Sorry im not trying to get ahead of myself.


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## hellah fresh (Feb 26, 2009)

OK i think i might be getting somewhere here. Ok so i decided to check out youtube and see whats the deal with half toning. So i got this sample picture of Chris Henson below that is i think somwhere 2338x2???.. anyways its big. So the video in youtube showed that its is good to adjust the contrast a little but to make the picture a bit more clear thus removing some dots form the clear area. So that i did was greyscale the image, adjust the clearity to 5 (the strongest strenth), Adjust and made the contrast kinda high but not too much, then convert into halftone and this is what i got! Take a look. The picture below i kinda resized it a little so it wont take so long to load. And the Original size is the link below. It will show you the finer details of my halftone work. So am i on the right track? BTW i dont this less then 5 minutes in PsP9. I know i need to experiment more and on it since i "might" have learned how to do a nicer halftone a bit. But i wanted to show you and see and tell me the rights and wrong with this. Also i am going to test print this on my 17x22 glossy waterproof film and see how it will go.










http://members.cox.net/fresh4/CH%20BIG.jpg


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## Spot_Worker (Oct 22, 2008)

Art director, I feel ya.Once my roll tank developer stop working, in the middle a large job. I had to use a developer that hand film from the wall camera. So I had to feed it in,in complete darkness.

Fresh, Some of us old timers had to do most things by hand with plates and what not. Best for you is fine software way.....what ever software you can pick easy and can afford.


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## Spot_Worker (Oct 22, 2008)

What programs are you using?


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## hellah fresh (Feb 26, 2009)

I respect the old timers and the work you guys put into on making a nice halftone the old fashion way. The program i am currently using is Paint Shop Pro 9. I am going to test print another halftone tonight when i get home and see how the results will look this time on my film. I hope i can get this right.


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## myk5 (Jul 28, 2008)

hellah fresh said:


> Hello! I been trying to get this halftone down for some designs and for some reason i can not achieve the smooth and clean look of my halftones. Can someone please tell me what i am doing wrong? So i am just using an example of my halftone that im getting. So below i have a few pictures. I am trying to get a clean halfone of Marilynn M but this is how mine is coming out. The dots are kinda bold and isnt how i want them to be.
> 
> Now the tshirt below the graphic is made out of halftones. Notice not so big and blotchy dots. So what do i need to do to get the clean picture halftone down?
> 
> ...


Yes, many postscript printers will do this automatically for you.

BUT, here's the thing. Creating the halftone is easier than printing one. So if you're silk screening this image for a t-shirt, the marilyn image with the fat dots will print easier than an image with fine dots. The fine dot image - the dots may not stay on the shirt, and some shading may get filled entirely with ink.

Generally silkscreening fine line screen halftones is best reserved for paper.

If you're doing your halftones in Photoshop and not with a postscript printer, understand that you're dealing with a bitmap first. That means there's no anti-aliasing - the circles will look 'stepped'.

There are two things going on with a photoshop halftone - the screen frequency/dots per inch, and image resolution in pixels per inch. 

The more you need a dot to look round or oval and not like a rectangle - the higher the pixels per inch need to be. And if you are using a fairly high dots per inch, you need a REALLY high resolution to keep them roundish.

Fortunately, you're working with a bitmap, single channel color. So even 1000pixels per inch won't kill you in terms of file size - go for it.

The screen resolution is how many dots or lines per inch your image is. The more dots, the more smooth the image will be (and the harder to print on a shirt with silkscreen or vinyl). 

Understand about t-shirts - most commonly they are seen at some distance - which means an image that doesn't seem as smooth as you want up close, may be perfect for printing and looking smooth when on a shirt and worn by a person.


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## hellah fresh (Feb 26, 2009)

^^^ I see and yes i totally understand at a far distance the image will be smooth compare to looking at it up close. Im just trying to get my picture halftone right so i can expand my designs. Well i got home today and i did the same steps i did with the chris henson picture adjust contrast, clearify and then convert into a halftone. So now what i did was save the image 2000+ pixels to make the halftone more fine. So now when i went to print it out the dots came in but my printer still printed some grey areas. So i went back and did the color balance with the 3 colors and changed the middle grey into white. So now its Black,white,white. So what am i doing wrong here... howcome it is printing some shades of grey along with the halftones? My printer is set to where i can print it out to be 1440dpi or 2880dpi. So i went with the superfine quality over speed with 2880dpi. But even as i changed the setting in my print setup to be black only it still prints grey. Any ideas?


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## myk5 (Jul 28, 2008)

Your printer will not print 2000 pixels per inch, it can only print the number of pixels it is designed to print. When the design has more pixels than it can print - it delivers a gray.

Understand the difference between pixels per inch and dots per inch. 
The screen is dots, or lines, per inch - this is the dot you're printing. 
The resolution of your image is the number of pixels per inch of your image. As I describe, increasing the dots per inch for the image is part of the Photoshop halftone screening dialog box. 

If you create your halftone and THEN increase the resolution (without increasing file size)- all you accomplish is creating dots too small for your printer to print.

Also, if your image is 10" x 17" and your printer only prin ts on letter size - if you reduced the image to fit the paper - the dots printed will be smaller than they are in the full size i mage, and perhaps too small for your printer to handle.

For a tight screen frequency that can be printed with silkscreen, try from 30 to 60 lines or dots per inch for your halftone. At my last job we were able to print many 45 lines per inch screen images.

It's tricky, there's often gain on the ink so the halftone prints far darker than intended. But it can be a trial and error process at first.


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## hellah fresh (Feb 26, 2009)

Ok so i am still experimenting with my halftone and what i ended up doing with the image after i halftone is to decrease the color to a 2bit 2 color black and white. So far for me i am kinda getting the hang of it ut as the lpi i still can not find that adjustment. So here is a sample of what i did now a picture of MM that i have resized. It was already grey scale and what i did was bumped up the brightness a little bit and also bumped up the contrast to get rid of some grey. As you see it is in a simple 2bit. Agian here is the step i did: Grey scale/adjust contrast - 30+ brightness - 30+ contrast/convert to halftone/ decrease to 2bit color. Since i decrease the color to a 2bit to get rid of the grey now the dots isnt really smooth... but is that the way it is suppose to be? I also made a link of the picture i did below on the regular scale just fo you to see. What do you think? i did 3 test prints so far and this is pretty much how i did the 3 in my steps.











http://members.cox.net/fresh4/MM%20BIG.jpg


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## LaTonya (Sep 1, 2008)

To get a great halftone with any photo are any thing the has color, just scan your image and print grey scale and you will have a halftone photo. Sample. Try it and you will see, that is if you are going to print it in one color.


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## hellah fresh (Feb 26, 2009)

Yes for now i am just aiming for 1 color with a nice quality halftone. So say print the halftone in grey scale instead of me making it into a 2color bitmap?


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## myk5 (Jul 28, 2008)

How is this to be printed. This is an important question. If you're doing DTG printing, that's full process color and all this halftone stuff is irrelevant. If you're using Vinyl, forget using a halftone entirely. If you're using silkscreen, you need a very fine mesh and a hard squeegee.

As previewed here, and the image is so large it's distorting the page so I have scroll back and forth to see it on this laptop (next time just crop a piece of the full size halftone).

You've been lied to, there is no one setting for brightness and contrast that's going to be best for all images. And image that is already highly contrasted could be ruined by your settings. The beauty of halftones is that you can retain subtle greyscale information and print it with a single color.

With this Marilyn image, much of the edge detail in the hair and shoulders is dropped out completely. In this instance, it actually works. But a different photo and you could be losing an entire facial profile or something.

So what I do not know is if you reduced the size of your image when you posted it. Again, just copy a piece of the half tone and paste it into a new smaller file - let us see that.

If this is full size, I'd suggest that the dots could be too small. They would, in my experience with silkscreen, tend to not stay on the fabric or the color gain could make the arm on our right almost all black.

You want to be able to see the dots, and see bigger dots become smaller dots and the shade becomes lighter.

What I see here looks like a pattern dither. Try ellipse at 45%, 30 lines per inch in your dialog box.


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## myk5 (Jul 28, 2008)

hellah fresh said:


> Yes for now i am just aiming for 1 color with a nice quality halftone. So say print the halftone in grey scale instead of me making it into a 2color bitmap?


Keep your halftone a bitmap, if the resolution is high enough to have the smallest dot actually look almost round, the file size of the image in grayscale may make it hard to work with. And, in grayscale - you can mess up your halftone with antialiasing very easily.


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## myk5 (Jul 28, 2008)

LaTonya said:


> To get a great halftone with any photo are any thing the has color, just scan your image and print grey scale and you will have a halftone photo. Sample. Try it and you will see, that is if you are going to print it in one color.


That's only if you have a postscript printer. And if you don't have rip software you can't control the linescreen frequency, or the shape of the halftone object.


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## hellah fresh (Feb 26, 2009)

Ok so i am going to attempt to screen print a halftone image i got ready. So now the thing is... Should i just print the halftone with 1 screen thus inverting the image when i make the film. Or can i print out a white coat of ink and then lay the halftone on top of it? BTW the image is a large image that will be 14X20 and the mesh size i was thinking of is 280.


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