Paragon Screening

[Joe]

I believe this is the Nexus version of stochastic screening, right? Anyone using this on a web press? Tips, tricks, pitfalls on making plates...running on press would be appreciated. Can you use a normal plate densitometer for your readings?

[whoami]

There's a couple of screen shots of what the paragon screenings looks like.  One is euclidean the other is concentric.  They do have a paragon organic which I believe is 2nd order FM.  I couldn't get a screen capture of that because we don't have a license for it.  We are testing concentric right now and we like it because it completely gets rid of any visible rosette patterns.  It saves ink and it gives you a really smooth final product.  With our standard screening (CQS) we usually only print at 175 at the most but with concentric we were all the way up to 283.  So it gives you more of a continous tone. 

They also do have a 1st order FM screening but not under Paragon.

[G_Town]

Paragon is another screening like PCC Nominal or CQS screening.

Looking under my options for dot shape I have Euclidean, Diamond, elipse, round and concentric. Concentric being that wacky new circle with a dot in the middle haven't seen it in use yet. There may be an FM version in Paragon that we just don't have.


How is Concentric Screening Revolutionary?
Artwork Systems' new Concentric Screening is a revolutionary halftone dot technology that divides the conventional round dot into thin concentric rings. These rings limit ink film thickness on the offset plate, thereby providing greater stability on press and increased color saturation. Printers are able to increase—even double—screen rulings without experiencing the traditional problems of mottle, dot gain, and variability typically associated with high screen rulings.

[G_Town]

Eh he beat me to the post button 

[whoami]

It's those ninja skills I have!!!

[Joe]

I believe it is the organic we are going to test. Still waiting on a trial license for it though.

I worry we'll output a set of plates and they'll put in press and not know how to run it and then scrap the whole thing. We're not known for our patience.

[G_Town]

Had the exact thing happen to us, customer expresses interest (must have picked up a copy of american printer in the lobby). Owner says lets test it on a live job, color goes UP and DOWN because pressman/press (and I hate to admit it I) don't have any experience with FM. It's always fun to learn about something after you have failed. btw job was rejected

Learn as much as you can before you run it ie..what Spot size are you going to run, what spot size can your imager image, is your plate rated for that spot size etc... we did 10 and our lotem was qualified for only 20 and up.

Then move into the pressroom and make sure they know what to do or you'll probably tank as well.

Good Luck

[Joe]

Yep, those are the issues I'm trying to avoid. We just switched to Kodak plates. Our Luscher says we can go to 10 but Kodak says 20 will probably be fine. Hopefully they get Luscher and Kodak involved in it.

[Zimmy3]

Check out our screening we came up with for flexo.

http://www.phototype.com/archives/index.php?paged=2

[MonkeyBoy]

Joe, we used to run the Agfa Viper's crystal raster screening which ran beautifully. We then went to Pageflow/Nexus and found the FM screening to be the closest to the crystal raster. It's never been quite as nice as the crystal but the FM does some nice work. It took us months to find the best adjustments and whatnot but it was worth it. Mind you we are still on Nexus 8.1 so things may have changed.
I'm also sure that if a hack like me can make it work and look nice that other people can do it too.