Plate Curves

[Ear]

Double check your focus, while you're at it.

Case in point: We switched from positive to negative plates a couple years ago. We still had some inventory, so instead of over-writing the queues on the platesetter, we made new ones. Upon testing, we could not get a decent result off the heatset web. We linerized and checked and pulled our hair out... then, on a whim, I was poking through settings and noticed that the tech guy had set up the Heatset plate queue to focus on a .008" plate... our plates are .012". Readjusted the focus and everything worked perfectly.

The moral? Always recheck the base settings before going any further.

[Farabomb]

Yeah, this is going to be hell for me. We were never linear. We used the native state of the kodak plate, curved that. Threw kodak out and I used a overall 5% bump curve with a little tweaking to get the Fuji as close as I could (now I wish I never pulled off that miracle).

Now I'm here chasing ghosts. As Joe said my linear plate isn't acting linear. A linear plate won't match old jobs. I need a plate that matches my old plate, no matter how I get there. I have 2 techs coming in today and it's up to them to get us there. That was the deal.

I want this plate to work. The pressmen want to keep the old plate. I don't like fucking with what works either but if we did that, we'd still be shooting film.

I picked the wrong week to stop drinking.  :undecided:

[Joe]

If you want to save yourself some headaches in the future...get a linear plate and then create a calibration curve to make it match your old plates. That way the next time, and there will be a next time whether it is new plates or a new CTP, all you will have to do is make a linear plate and then apply the calibration curve you make now to that. And you'll be done.