Think about this. How does one get a super fine multi dimensional gray scale image on a black tee? Do you use a 45lpi halftone on a 200 mesh? Some might do something similar. Maybe you use a white and a gray and knock out the black? Maybe you go crazy and do 55 lpi. try working outside the box and do 70-75 line screen on a 350 mesh...but use 4-5 screens to achieve it. This is not a "How Too" for the average black and white photo". I'm talking about fun stuff. Stuff that pushes us to the next level and gets our blood pumping and ready to take on those difficult jobs. That's what this post is about. Think of it like this. The early, well, even today's painters.... Not Corel painter, or digital painters, but "traditional" painters that use real paint will paint in layers. The old masters would start out a painting with washes of thin paint over a pencil drawing and build from there. Photo realism or (less visible dots) on apparel can be approached the same way. Corel Draw and Adobe -Photoshop and Illustrator know that "layers" are important to building a good design and so it is on tees. 350 mesh? Do they make that? Yes. They even make higher mesh...but it's expensive and thin, therefore not as durable. If you can get used to using such a mesh, the results are fantastic. LAYERS. Keep that in mind, because sooner or later someone is going to say "we don't need to use higher than 55-65 lpi halftones because heck, they're tee shirts...and nobodies ever going to get that small of a dot to print on a garment thread!" I've heard that before...and it's true that some weaves do mess with the angle of your line screen and cause an interference, but lets start by asking this. ....If we can't put "that small of a dot|" on a tee shirt, then.....how does a 7 pico-liter ink spray (roughly equivalent to a 1% dot in a 85 line screen) work for DTG on tee shirts? Because it's layered. A single dot or a cluster of dots can indeed fall into the valley of the garment weave and be lost never to see the light of day, but the other thousands laying on top CAN be seen. Many printers (the majority of the industry) has a 6-8 color press (be it manual or auto), Others will have more. Large shops that print retail and licensed images extremely well will have a 14,16-or even a 22 color press so that they can be more versatile in their offerings. With a press like this, you can produce phenomenal work. Take the image below, with a large press, you can apply this printing method that I'm referring to...and improve the image resolution of the photo below x 2. That job below was a 10 color print on a 14 station press. For the rest of us, we can apply this method using our 6 color manual presses (on the right job). The right job might be anything limited in color count, but might be tonal in color or a black and white image that we normally call out as shooting for that "gray scale" black and white photo look. A single 1 color black ink on white tees will give you a decent image (with visible dots) at 45-55 lpi but it does not give you that immense tonal range that is available in an original photo. It seems a little flat, but if we increase the number of dots put down one might think that this will give us more tonal range right? Not exactly. The higher the line count, the more detail is available, but at the same time...this requires a higher mesh and thinner threads...and the ink lay down becomes much lighter. At 70 line screen on a 350 mesh, your solid black areas will be...less than solid black. More like black with some fibers popping though, causing it to look dark gray. This is why some people prefer to use two blacks. One for halftone work where they can print it lighter and the other for type so that can print it heavy (solid). At this point, you might be hanging with me...but you're thinking, "I lose the 5% dots at 55lpi, how am I going to make sure I can hold a 3% dot on a 70 line screen? Well, the answer lay in the mesh or "mesh threads" rather. More to come. [/color][/size][/font] |
This is why some people prefer to use two blacks. One for halftone work where they can print it lighter and the other for type so that can print it heavy (solid). [/color][/size][/font]