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Screen printing & controlling size of dot pattern in gradient halftones gradien

Forum|Forum|13 years ago
February 20, 2013
2 replies
37006 views

I'm using A Mac OS 10.6.8, and Illustrator CS5.

I do garment screen printing.

In my designs I use a gradient, which needs to have the halftone dots controlled, and a certain size, to expose properly on my screens to then print.

I can't seem to figure out how to adjust the frequency or LPI, and the angle so that they work. It still prints out as a seen on screen

Thanks ahaead of time for your reply.

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Monika Gause

Community Expert

You can only do this when printing the file.

If you need to set the resolution in the bojects, you might try the halftone effect in the plug-in Phantasm CS

B

biz883883Author

Participating Frequently

Thanks to both.

Michael,

Doing it that way leaves the dots pixelated, not sharp enuff to expose to my screen.

Monika,

I did purchase and have used Astute Graphics Phantasm CS, and that is my work around.

In Freehand I could set the Frequency (LPI) to 32, and the Angle at 12 degrees, and I was done.

I sincerely wish Adobe would have or will, take the best of Freehand and put it into Illustrator. How would they know what the 'best' is? Ask their user community with messages posted in Subject: Freehand users. Then elaborate.

1 or 2 clicks in Freehand that take me 4 and up in Illustrator.

So as not to sour this, I do very much appreciate the prompt response from Adobe via Michael, and you Monika.

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F

Fun Seeker

Inspiring

Hi Jet,

Thanks for the response.

I'm attaching two pics, the first shows the dialog box that appears when using the Illustrator plug-in. It's from Astute Graphics and is called Phantasm CS. As you can see, you have the option of setting the DPI and Pattern. Honestly, you should take a look at their plug-ins, they're amazing!

The second pic illustrates how the plug-in works. Using Pantone 186C, the top row has the tints set to 100%, 80%, 60%, 40% and 20%. The results in the second row are when I have the DPI set to 20, and in the third row the DPI is set to 50. As you can see, the dot size is much smaller as the DPI is increased. Once converted into halftone dots, just select > expand appearance, and dots become fully editable paths, so I can change the color, tint, etc.

So, I'm just trying to figure out the best way to approach this. I could always just prepare the artwork using a variety of different tints and let them handle it the best way they see fit, or I can create the halftones myself using this plugin, but if I do that I would prefer to know how to set the DPI and Pattern to acheive the best results.

If, based on what I've shown, could tell me exactly what to ask the printer that would also help, at least this way I could present the question(s) properly ensuring an adequate response.

Thanks so much for your time and effort.

Kind regards,

Mark

Hey Jet,

In case this image is too small and you can't see what I'm referring to, here's a snapshot of the same but in B&W. The top row was at a DPI of 20 and the bottom row @50 DPI.

Thanks.

Mark

Michael Riordan

Inspiring

Did you try effect>pixelate>color halftone?

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