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DPI and halftone

Posted: Tue Oct 15, 2013 8:53 am
by MattSquire
Hi there

I was wondering if someone could give me some advice creating halftone gradients for printing on paper.

My screens are 120T metric, which I believe works out to be 305 in US count. Can anyone tell me what linecount i should be using for this mesh when creating my halftones.

Thanks
Matt

Re: DPI and halftone

Posted: Tue Oct 15, 2013 8:54 am
by MattSquire
Also, should I keep the DPI at 300dpi at actual size

Re: DPI and halftone

Posted: Mon Jan 19, 2015 3:18 am
by Dynamik Graphics
The industry standard (when printing on garments) is 45 lpi to 55 lpi.

Dot shape is "Ellipse" and Angle is usually at 25 degrees.

These settings will minimize the formation of moire' patterns and will make the dots big enough to push ink through.

Since your screen is such a high mesh count though, you should be able to do 55 lpi without a problem. (Higher lpi yields more detail)

Take into consideration the viscosity of the ink you're using. If it's as thick as the average plastisol ink, you might want to go with 45 lpi to ensure your prints get maximum coverage on your print strokes. 55 lpi may make the dots so small that thicker inks can't get pushed through (although in my 10 years in printing, I've never understood how ink can find it's way through tiny pin holes!)

Just my two cents, and admittedly the only printing on paper I ever did apart from set-up/test print purposes was printing on heat transfer sheets making numbers, but I wasn't using half tones and was using plastisol inks.