cheers
-steve
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Charlie Palmer writes:
>Briefly, the negative made by EverColor from my PhotoShop files is a 400 LPI halftone, which is considerably finer than the 150 to 200 LPI output from many service bureaus. They can make negatives up to 24"x36". EverColor uses a Scitex ImageSetter to make the negative, which is on silver-based film and thus lacks the permanence problem of digital negatives output through an Iris printer. The dot pattern is very fine. With the unaided eye, you cannot discern dots in the print; dots can be seen in lighter tonal areas only with the aid of a loupe. We did not use the Diffusion Dither Bitmap method which is mentioned in Dan Burkholder's excellent book. I have tried negatives >with both the 400 LPI linescreen and 1200 DPI Diffusion Dither Bitmap; I can (with the unaided eye) discern no significant difference between them regarding apparent sharpness, "dotty" appearance, etc.
I too have had good experiences printing at a very high line screen as opposed to the
diffusion dither method. I however am printing at 300 or 350 lpi rather than 400 lpi. My
concern is in the capability of the imagesetter. I know of no imagesetters currently on
the market that can print 400 + line film and maintain the 256 shades of gray currently
possible in Postscript. Perhaps the Scitex is different. The bottom line is I would not
want the image to suffer while trying to print 400+ line film. We are getting Diamond
screening which is a type of stochastic screening next week and I plan to test that
screening as well.
btw, we have been successfully printing with Ultrastable and have almost completed our
calibration cycle.
A note to those attempting digital negatives using laser printers: When you get inferior
results using a laser or Iris printer (as opposed to a calibrated high-end imagesetter),
don't condemn the entire digital neg process. Digital negs work well with the proper
equipment.
Randy Green
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