Hey all -
We have a couple of small presses in back that we print stationary, NCR, envelopes - small 1 and 2 color print shop stuff. The plant that I was with some years back had halftone screen overlays for burning to film to created the halftone but we don't have that here. I'm trying to find the best (maybe not easiest) method for creating a flat halftone - 20% - 40% - 60% (not a gradient) in Illustrator or Photoshop. I'm finding there are plug ins like Phantasm that can do the trick but I got to wondering. If I run a file through the RIP software with output file as pdf or tiff that saves to a file, will it not generate a halftone for me?
Not sure I understand the question.
Why can't you go into Illy or Photoshop and make a solid swatch, and then create a screen of that swatch?
Why can't you make a 100% solid, send it to the RIP, and then create a curve that outputs 100% at 20, 40 or 60% output?
I can make a screen or tint at 60% in Illustrator but it only outputs a continuous gray tone on the laser printer or HP proofer that we use to shoot the film from. I need to have output with halftone dots like the old days. Sounds pretty clumsy but on these old presses, there is no rip...it's just down and dirty printing.
Thankfully I'm kinda slow right now so had so time to mess with the rip.
I set up a configuration on the Navigator RIP to output the rip file to a tiff at 100 line screen. It appears to have worked but looks like I have some tweaking
What happens if you try to print to your device like this (with your device in place of the Acrobat settings I put in there...)?
see screenshot
I was hoping it would be that easy. It should be.
I now know I can accomplish it on the rip with some work but, yep, it would be slick to do it with the driver.
I may be too late, but what about Photoshop/Filter/ pixelate/color halftone ?
see attached.
I hope I'm not man-splaining...
Ya, it works but it's not accurate as I was hoping to achieve. The client wants a 60% and an 80% screen of black and both Photoshop and Illustrator are really hit and miss. Ripping the file and saving as a tiff is working but the output file is a bitmap image.
Remember the old days with Freehand? You told it what screen angle, with percent of tint, dpi. and there you had it. The one of only a few features I'd give a thumbs up for Freehand.
I'll have to see if I have an old version of Freehand around!
Thanks guys for all the input.
Finally got what I was looking for. I know it took longer than I needed to put into it but I'm like a grizzly bear - I wan't about to give in. All the tools were here and today I had the time.
Thanks again for the help and support!!
Quote from: born2print on March 25, 2019, 11:07:42 AMsee attached.
I hope I'm not man-splaining...
Not at all. But I think we'd all appreciate it if you did some manscaping.
:o :rotf: