Today we’re going to briefly explain how to send files for creating screen printing films.
If the image is made up of one or more full colours, you just need to set each colour on its printing layer, make sure that the entire area of the design is set on 100% black, and print on black and white film. In so doing we obtain a film (if there’s just one colour) or several films (for multi-coloured designs) to use for exposing the frames (one frame per colour).
If, however, the design contains shading (for example, in the case of a black and white photo), it’s necessary to transform the image into grey scale and print it using a dedicated Raster Image Processor (RIP) software which manages the printing process. Using the RIP makes it possible to print the image in half-tones.
The different shades of grey are printed as a series of dots of different dimensions, which to our eye look like varying tones of grey.
It’s necessary to set the correct number of dots per centimetre, with the setting depending on the screen printing frame being used. By exposing the frame using this film with a halftone design, the design is transferred, as a negative image, to the screen.
The holes created by the halftone design will allow the ink to pass through and the image will be produced on the printed item.