Expert: Amy - 2/13/2007

Question
I am using Ill. CS or PS CS or Corel 11 on a PC to try and make plates for screen printing.
My printer is a Ricoh Aficio AP610N, which is a laser printer but it has an Adobe PostScript3 driver that I have installed. My PPD is called the same as my printer name.
I know all about the lpi and angles and how to do the seps, but I can not get the defined "dots" that I need no matter how low I make the lpi. I read in another question that you can do a filter effect under Pixilate>Color Halftone, but those dots are too large.
I know that graphic designers are doing this all the time for screen printing plates. Any idea what I'm doing wrong? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Answer
Hi Dan,

I think I've run into this before. I believe in Illustrator, the dot pattern / halftone availability in Sep Setup is a function of the PPD/Printer. Illustrator's dialog only displays what's available in the driver code. Prepress folks have high-tech printers, thus high-tech PPDs. If it were available to you, you'd see something call "Document Ink Options."

Usually, graphic designers don't output halftones anymore; since desired dots and angles are specific to different types of equipment, it's something best left to the people running the printers.

I only have v9 here at home but when I get to work tomorrow I will double-check that they haven't changed things in CS2.

Otherwise, if you have PhotoShop, could you open the image in PhotoShop and use its full range of halftone shapes to get the output you want?

Were you trying to create some artistic effect? What's your desired final product?

-Amy