U of S | Mailing List Archive | alt-photo-process-l | Re: finer aquatint screen revisited

Re: finer aquatint screen revisited



Good question Mark.  I noticed that 1200 dpi screens I had tested from Copy Graphics did tend to result in darker, more contrasty images than the 1800.  Still better than the "standard issue" aquatint screens people generally use for this process, but not as good as the 1800 dpi. Never tried changing the 80% part though...until recently.  I asked the service bureau to tweak my recent 2540 dpi screen to be at 82% since, for whatever reason, the 80% density screen output from their imagesetter was resulting in slightly darker prints than my baseline standard screen.  Whites needed a little more pop.  I'm concerned this will change when they go to fresh chemistry, but we'll see. 

I could have augmented my standard exposure times I suppose, but instead augmented the density of the screen a smidgen.

Jon

Ender100@aol.com wrote:
I was thinking about the aquatint screen and wondering if there is a  relationship between the screen percent (80%, 60%, etc....) and the resolution of the screen (1800 dpi, etc)?  Does the "%" go down as the resolution goes up?


Best Wishes,
Mark Nelson

Precision Digital Negatives - The System
PDNPrint Forum at Yahoo Groups
www.MarkINelsonPhoto.com

In a message dated 4/23/07 9:59:45 AM, jon@terabear.com writes:


Hi Susan,

With good care the screens theoretically will last a long time, but they
can get dings, half-moons, kinks, etc over time.  Since imagesetters
have become few and far between, stocking up on custom screens seems to
be a good idea...or maybe Loris is interested in starting a cottage
industry in Turkey, land of the cheap imagesetter output!  ;-)

The purpose of my last message was to say I'm basically done looking for
vendors and the requirements are less rigid than I thought, as written
below.  The screens I was getting from CopyGraphics were great, but
there's apparently quite a bit of latitude in what one can do with a
finer screen.   Once I get good screens from two of the vendors I plan
on buying a bunch at various sizes, then putting their contact info on
this list and my procedures page.

The one param I forgot to include was the imagesetter is on the "Fine"
setting (as opposed to "Coarse" or "Very Fine").  Very fine produced too
much contrast.

Jon












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