Re: solarplate stochastic screen - Clarification
Jon, I worked with Peter some years ago on generating negatives with their imagesetter. Ice Fields was used for image negatives because they were able to use it to reduce some of the artifacts in the negatives produced with it. It wouldn't surprise me that you had better luck with a screen that didn't utilize Ice Fields to rasterize the screen, since an 80% screen wouldn't be printing the tones where the artifacts occurred. I would suggest that anyone using a screen first examine it closely on a light table and watch for striping or moire patterns in the screen. I found imagesetters to be somewhat unpredictable from one day to the next in generating an artifact free negative. Good luck! By the way, Chris has a good point about aquatint screens. Once the legacy imagesetters all bite the dust, what technology will be used to create screens? The newer technology that creates plates goes direct from computer to plate with no intervening screen needed. These new machines provide full color screens using a stochastic output at a high resolution up around 500 pixels per inch, though the dots per inch that the machine is using to render this is much higher, Creo makes a PlateSetter that produces 10,000 dots per inch, which could probably go up to 625 pixels per inch when reproducing a Photoshop image. I'm not sure what sort of plate they use to hold that kind of resolution. Best Wishes, Mark Nelson Precision Digital Negatives - The System PDNPrint Forum at Yahoo Groups www.MarkINelsonPhoto.com In a message dated 2/22/07 3:28:45 PM, jon@terabear.com writes: If you do order it from Copygraphics, please clarify whether or not it was rendered using "Ice Fields". Duane said they quickly found a file in my folder on their computers from 2 years ago -- among many -- and that it printed fine in a recent test swatch, without the striations -- but that's not the file from the version of the screen I wound up using! When I spoke with him yesterday he said he would look further into it. Again, there were 2 different methods Peter used to create the screen, and I didn't prefer the one using Ice Fields for some reason. If you can get a quality version of the 1800 dpi screen that didn't use Ice Fields, that's what I recommend going with. Just a point of clarification so there's no misunderstandings. Thanks, Jon ************************************** AOL now offers free email to everyone. Find out more about what's free from AOL at http://www.aol.com.
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