# Screen Printing a grayscale picture - how?



## skitzz (Apr 17, 2008)

Ok i want to scree print a shirt with the attached picture on it. The customer only wants one color for the picture. I am assuming what I want to go for is whats known as a halftone print. I am printing transperancies with an Epson 1400 printer with stock ink. I have adobe photoshop & Illustrator CS2. The color of the shirts will be black with red print and white with black print. I have a 4 color press with micro registration and am using plasitisol ink. what is minimum amount of screens i need? what mesh count should i use? what settings do I need in adobe PS or Illy? I'm trying to keep this as simple as possible...any help will be greatly appreciated. Thanks guys!


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## Tj Ryonet Tech (Jul 28, 2008)

Use photoshop to make it a black and white image. then print out the black channel through a rip program. Burn that onto your screen. Use red on the black, wipe out and use black on the white.


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## Jack Clements (Feb 27, 2008)

that would be pretty simple... If its one color you would need one screen. I would use a 230 mesh screen. print the image through your rip software at 45 lpi at 52 degrees. If you dont use rip software you can experiment with the color halftone filter in photoshop. You could get decent results that way but better results printing through rip software.


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## skitzz (Apr 17, 2008)

I dont have a RIP SW. Can I do it without one? There has to be a workaround right?


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## out da box (May 1, 2007)

Search ghostscript.


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## elaborate images (Jan 17, 2008)

We are doing a similar project and have rip software and need a perfect circle and don't know how to achieve that. The design is created by different densities of dots and it looks perfect on film but when we print it the result is fuzzy. We have a sample of a previously printed shirt so we know it can be done just don't know how. We are using 230 yellow mesh screen 45 lpi 45 degree using MultiRip


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## skitzz (Apr 17, 2008)

ok, so I was able to play with the greyscale &halftone settings in photoshop and get it to where I think it is good enought to print now. Only question is, how do I add fonts that are not in bitmap mode? Do I need to open this in Illustrator? I tried to add another layer where I would just try to add the fonts but all the menus are greyed out. Also, when I try to add a font, it turns the image red and I cant edit the font once I create it? What am I missing here?


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## Smokestack (Aug 4, 2008)

Well there are quite a few ways to accomplish the same thing.. First of all i hope that the image that you are gonna use is not the image that u posted here. It doesnt look to me to be too clean of an image when zoomed in on.. There is also no way that i would print that with one half tone screen. In my opinion, the white, gray and black levels need to be adjust a bit. As is, i think the image is gonna look too dull. Also for a manual press, keep in mind that when when you put text on the same screen as full image with halftone, you arent gonna like your results if you double stroke the print. The reason you would double stroke is because getting the ink to cover nicely on the text part of the image on a high mesh count isnt gonna be so easy. You are gonna have to single stroke and hope that you get it right otherwise evey shirt is gonna vary in darkness and opacity on your print.. You want to keep your customer correct? If the car image is gonna remain black and white on both color shirts, i would make a black halftone and a white halftone screen. I would also make a 3rd screen for your text. You certainly can go ahead and add the text to you halftone screen but especially if this is your first time doing this, you are gonna be be happy at the end of the job that you made 3 screens.. Being that this is your first halftone job, It may not be in your best interest to test on a customer. I can set the file up for you. I would make 2 chanels in photoshop after adjusting the levels and setting up for dot gain, save the file as a .dcs then create your final output file in illustrator, place that dcs file in there with the "link" option. Your color channels will now be in your swatch pallet as spot colors and you can do any text you want.. PM me if you want me to do all of this for you rather than testing it out on a client and hoping for the best.


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## skitzz (Apr 17, 2008)

thanks guys for the feedback...'smoke' I'll be pm'ing you soon!


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## jgabby (Mar 29, 2007)

Smokestack said:


> Well there are quite a few ways to accomplish the same thing.. First of all i hope that the image that you are gonna use is not the image that u posted here. It doesnt look to me to be too clean of an image when zoomed in on.. There is also no way that i would print that with one half tone screen. In my opinion, the white, gray and black levels need to be adjust a bit. As is, i think the image is gonna look too dull. Also for a manual press, keep in mind that when when you put text on the same screen as full image with halftone, you arent gonna like your results if you double stroke the print. The reason you would double stroke is because getting the ink to cover nicely on the text part of the image on a high mesh count isnt gonna be so easy. You are gonna have to single stroke and hope that you get it right otherwise evey shirt is gonna vary in darkness and opacity on your print.. You want to keep your customer correct? If the car image is gonna remain black and white on both color shirts, i would make a black halftone and a white halftone screen. I would also make a 3rd screen for your text. You certainly can go ahead and add the text to you halftone screen but especially if this is your first time doing this, you are gonna be be happy at the end of the job that you made 3 screens.. Being that this is your first halftone job, It may not be in your best interest to test on a customer. I can set the file up for you. I would make 2 chanels in photoshop after adjusting the levels and setting up for dot gain, save the file as a .dcs then create your final output file in illustrator, place that dcs file in there with the "link" option. Your color channels will now be in your swatch pallet as spot colors and you can do any text you want.. PM me if you want me to do all of this for you rather than testing it out on a client and hoping for the best.


Hi,

Can you basically explain how you set up the dot gain ?

Thks


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## Smokestack (Aug 4, 2008)

jgabby said:


> Hi,
> 
> Can you basically explain how you set up the dot gain ?
> 
> Thks


Dot gain is set up in Photoshop in Edit/Color Settings.. 

For a person on a manual press i would probably set the dot gain on you channels to be roughly 25%. That way your films will print out taking into consideration that there will be 25% dot gain on the prints.. Halftone prints to truly get them right are not an easy feat. So many factors go into the final print such as Squeege speed, squeege angle, squeege pressure.. just to name a few..Once you try it, you will see what i mean.. The trick is taking several test prints on the shirt to find that right combination of speed, pressure, and angle to make the print look good without getting too much dot gain and smear.. Dot gain is really only that the dots start showing bigger on the print than on the films.. So i advise anyone who prints halftone, to make their lives easier and figure in for that in the artwork. Believe me i found out the hard way with all of this. As a printer, i cant help looking at every print i see that people are wearing and you will see it too.. "the hack jobs" My suggestion to anyone just starting out trying to do art, seps, and printing with halftones is to read read read, then when you are done reading... read read read!  There are tons of links that can help.


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## Smokestack (Aug 4, 2008)

Here is an example of what you would be lookin at so you can better help your customer.....

This is what your image would look like printed from left to right.. White and Black ink printed on Black shirts, White and Black ink printed on red shirts (a third highlight white screen would make it not look so redish), next one is White only printed on Black shirts (you might think that looks good enough but trust me, it wont fly) and the last one is red shirt with black only printed on it without the white underlay


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## tompelias (Sep 24, 2008)

as an experienced printer of both plastisol and the water based paints or inks, printing the car in gryscale, one might think of it as a one screen design. extensive learning of printing (and i do the color separation) it still needs one more screen for the highlight, and to extract a precise highlight from photoshop is a bit complex to do. texts are separate screen from the halftones, so as not to jeopardize the halftones that require a different pressure in printing. To do it you have to have a good dpi or resolution source of the image, maybe 300dpi then extract the highlight, make it on another layer and invert the original image for the first or the main halftone (the car) print. then the txt follows to print and the highlight, and bingo,,,good, impressive print on black fabric. just pm over and helping you with that is far from impossible.


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## Smokestack (Aug 4, 2008)

I completely agree about the highlight white screen. Hands down that is that way i would do it. That is why i posted the red shirt image with only an underlay and black screen so people can see the importance of using a highlight white and get an idea.. Actually if i was printing on an automatic, there is so much midtone in that image.. I would actually print it White, flash, Black, Gray, Higlight white, all wet on wet after the flash.


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## forward dc (Nov 16, 2006)

elaborate images said:


> We are doing a similar project and have rip software and need a perfect circle and don't know how to achieve that. The design is created by different densities of dots and it looks perfect on film but when we print it the result is fuzzy. We have a sample of a previously printed shirt so we know it can be done just don't know how. We are using 230 yellow mesh screen 45 lpi 45 degree using MultiRip


marsha,

you may be getting a fuzzy image when you burn the screen because of your halftone angle. stay away from 45 degrees because there is more chance of moire (distortion) due to interference with the mesh threads. try 61 or 22.5 degrees and see if that works better.


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