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Author Topic: Screen Printing Fine Art Photography  (Read 1643 times)

printbreakr

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Screen Printing Fine Art Photography
« on: August 10, 2015, 10:17:33 pm »

Hey guys, crazy question for you all:

I was reading there are screen printing fabrics with resolutions around 300 dpi. Would screen printing fine art photographs using process colors (CMYK + whatever else is typically used to make better gradients and expand gamut) produce the same levels of detail and clarity as an inkjet printer printing an image with 300 ppi? Has anyone had experiences trying to screen print fine art photos?

Thanks.
« Last Edit: August 10, 2015, 10:26:48 pm by printbreakr »
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graeme

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Re: Screen Printing Fine Art Photography
« Reply #1 on: August 11, 2015, 03:33:11 am »

I imagine that it would be v. difficult to get your 4 separate prints registered correctly. Also an expensive way to make prints. ( 4 separate screens to prepare artwork for, coat, expose, print & clean up ).

This is what inkjet printing is for.
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Ernst Dinkla

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Re: Screen Printing Fine Art Photography
« Reply #2 on: August 11, 2015, 04:14:03 am »

The screens that I still have vary between 381 and 76 mesh. In silkscreen printing you need a halftone raster to print gradations. The color separation rasters together with the screen fabric create an ideal base for moiré in printing. For monochrome the halftone raster is usually set at 45 degrees to diminish that, with full color separations several angles have to be used. Using elliptical dot patterns or stochastic screening the moiré can be reduced as well. There are silkscreen fabrics up to 500 mesh. The higher the mesh resolution the lower the ink amount applied, the fabric threads/wires at some point occupy 75% of the surface, the holes at most 25%. There is a balance between enough fabric threads to have the mask/emulsion shadow dot to cling to and getting enough detail in the highlights where the mask/emulsion hole should not be blocked by too much fabric threads. The best silkscreen prints I have seen used up to 60 lpcm, 152 lpi, screen mesh around 400 if I recall correctly. Preferably UV curing inks to avoid any drying in of the ink on the mesh, another con of fine mesh. To reduce ink layer thickness some UV curing inks have a hybrid character, water or another solvent that also evaporates, raster dots on the paper less thick so the next color raster dots can be printed correctly.

In short mesh resolution is not translated to print resolution that easily. Not that I did not experiment to create a continuous tone silkscreen printing method using the silkscreen mesh itself. My aim was creating mesh holes of variable sizes. Starting from SS mesh for dimensional stability. mesh resolution of 150 to 200 threads. Continuous film positives (like used in conventional roto gravure or in collotype printing). A high density litho film mask created in contact printing from that SS mask. Dot reduction etching. This even dot pattern film mask fitting the mesh holes in register. The continuous film on top. This way the emulsion build up (hardening) started from the mesh threads first and grows towards the hole center depending on the translucency of the continuous tone film positive.The screen mesh already covered with enough photosensitive emulsion. Exposure to UV light but way longer than conventional, etc ............. and attention to more details than described here. Well it worked in a way but needed a lot more experiments, money, time and this was by the end of the last century with the signs of quality inkjet printing appearing. So I made the right decision and went the inkjet route. There is some irony in the fact that some quality raster silkscreen printing companies used the LC and LM inks as extra print runs to CMYK after inkjet printing showed the advantages of that method.

Met vriendelijke groet, Ernst

http://www.pigment-print.com/spectralplots/spectrumviz_1.htm
December 2014 update, 700+ inkjet media white spectral plots
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