P: Restore halftone screen function for printing separations

Bring back the screen button Dang It! IT IS VITAL!

I have Ai & ID, But It doesn't always work like that. I just want to know why would you take something out of something that you don't have to. When I spend all of this money on a suit, I expect it to work like it is suppose to. I just think when you sell someone an improved version of something, it should be just that. Not a crippled version that so far as I can tell is just making a lot of people (including me and everyone I know) MAD. I have seen more forums on this subject than anything
other subject I have looked into. Please just make a patch, a bandaid. a plugin, a stone tablet and chisel, something to justify money spent.

Hi PEC, thanks for the input. As you said a very LoFi way of doing a CMYK sep.
A good example of what extra work needs to be done just to add lpi and screen angles to a graphic in a newer version of Photoshop.

Old version...color correct in channels add lpi and screen values make sure your custom ink settings are correct then output.

Imagine using the above method for a 12 col simulated process separation. Something which used to take seconds (adding angles and LPI to dialogue box) Now takes hours.

Of course you could forget this above LoFi approach and just output your multichannel or CMYK doc etc from AI or ID , put the angles and LPI in there then output..

I think David Evans is right, they want us to buy a copy of AI or ID as well.

I've seen a (crude) workaround for creating your own separation in Photoshop (I don't know why he merges them in an RGB doc, but it might be worth sharing/discussing: https://vimeo.com/2811225#at=0

I can't find any bug reports about DCS2 in recent years. Please write up a separate report on that, with details.

I thnk I have an interesting possible solution to this huge, huge problem. First off I'm new here, hello. Second this is a huge problem for screen printers of all types. It is a huge problem, Adobe.

Anyway. I use a minum of 4-5 spot splates in addition to cmyk on all my jobs and require custom angles and shapes and the transfer functions. I save the files as DCS2.0 files.

For my CS3 workflow I wrote a photoshop action in CS3 that adds all my spot plates, transfer functions, screen angles and shapes to my files all in one action. I appears as though when I import the action into CS6 and use it make my plates it also adds the transfer functions and screen angles. After saving the file in CS6, I can open the file in CS 3 and verify all the angles and tranasfers are present.

The only porblem is CS 6 can't save a DCS2.0 file correctly anymore and now it includes all alpha channels when saved, not just the spot channels, which is totally wrong of course (Anyone pointed this one out to you Adobe?). All the extra channels have to be deleted, and I use a lot of alphas to do the trapping so its a big pain. Also occasionally the action goes wrong and gives one or two plates a value of 1 dot per inch witch makes the whole plate fail on output and theRIP flushes the plate. This probelm would be impoosble to trouble shooot and fix with CS6.

However my best workaround so far besides just doing all work in CS3 has been to do the work in CS6 and then copy all my finished PS color separtion files into a folder, then launch CS3 and do a batch Action on the folder that turns all the PS files into CS3 DCS files. And then only work in CS3 if I have to troubleshoot screen angles. I would simply do all the work in CS3 but I need to know the new versions in order to stay current.

Sometimes I get the feeling none of the Marketing Execs at Adobe are actual printing people, and that they all attended some printing 101 classes in local JCs where the instructionr covered saving .eps files and where his sole instruction in Transfer Functions was, "And never check these buttons, no uses them, make sure to never check them." And so said marketing execs said, "hey, don't recode that stuff back in, don't you know you're never suppoed to check those buttons?" Arrggh...

Hello,

As a RIP developer (in fact was involved in writing our own PostScript RIP), I don't understand why Adobe removed this in the first place.
According to one link it was because it was using level 1 PostScript, which it wasn't (level 1 didn't have support for color).
But the fact was it worked (I was never aware of any issues or bugs from a RIP point of view), especially for all these users who were printing separates, so all they needed was level 1 PostScript. Screen printers don't use Accurate screens, in fact even in pre press most users who do use these kinds of features do so based on RIP pre defined settings, not based on postscript from the application (and as I am sure you are aware most pre press now work from PDF files instead).

I am pretty sure that the halftone commands from Photoshop were no worse than Illustrator, perhaps someone from Adobe can tell me why Illustrator halftone commands are so much better than Photoshop.....

All these guys want is the same level of support they used to have, it worked and its not rocket science.

My biggest issue with the PostScript from Photoshop was that it didn't include the PostScript comments for the color planes. So if you ever do fix this (which I expect is very unlikely) would be nice if you could add.

We added support for CS5 and CS6 by adding a plugin that sends a DCS-EPS file to our RIP that the user can then specify the halftones in the RIP for each channel. But its amazing how many users still don't want to upgrade as they really want to set the halftones in Photoshop not it the RIP.
Its just the way they work.

I will confirm Scotts numbers that there has to be a good 30000+ users out there.

In all honesty as a programmer who has developed both a RIP and application software, I don't buy into the reason Adobe have so far given on why they removed this, it maybe cynical of me, but I cant help thinking this was simply Adobe trying to get users to have to go out and buy a copy of Illustrator as well. They seem to have an architecture of making you need additional programs, let face it anyone with Illustrator really needs a copy of Acrobat Professional in order to run pre flight tools on the PDF's Illustrator creates, why isn't that built into Illustrator ?

Anyway I wish everyone luck in getting this functionality added back...

Best regards

-David

No, we cannot.

Can you say when the next scheduled release for a new version is?

That is not even remotely what I said.
But when we go talk to RIP vendors about changing their code to help customers, we're going to talk to the ones affecting the most customers.
It's not that we don't care, it's that there's a lot more out there than just yourself.