|
HALFTONES FOR PRINTING
standard vs stochastic
|
|
|
This greyscale scan displays the entire range of tone from black to white.
|
|
On this side is a standard halftone made by translating greyscale information into a pattern of noticeable dots. Standard halftone technology is ubiquitous and antique, still built into many printing devices including (surprisingly) laserprinters, but notcolor ink-jet printers. Newspapers and magazines routinely use standard halftones, and never print at the higher image quality of stochastic halftones because printers don't know how to make them. The only time stochastic halftones appear in print is in ads and other custom uses. Too bad. Every newspaper and magazine and book and zine could be printed stochastically on standard offset presses. |
This side shows the stochastic equivalent of the left side. The dots are placed irregularly, and are small. Stochastic halftones are made possible by the computer. More than just a better reproduction, their visual texture is very artful and appealing. They are used on fine art presses printing 2400 dots per inch. There is nothing to prevent designers from making their own 300 dpi stochastic halftones for printing on ordinary offset presses. But the available software leaves something to be desired. The stochastic images on this website were made with Digital Darkroom, an ancient Macintosh program that still works. Photoshop provides a disappointing alternative as you can see for yourself. |
DISCUSSION |
|
©2000 John Kyrk
posted 1997 June 27, revised 2000 January 3
|