Halftone Effects


Pinholes and Break Lines for DTF and DTG Printing


The Wasatch Halftone Effects add "pinholes" or "break-line" patterns to your printed graphic, allowing designs to "breathe" and stretch with the fabric without causing cracking within the design. Custom effects to benefit the "hand feel" and durability can be created here.

Controls are provided to support the application of digital halftones, using variable LPIs, angles, ellipses, and densities (or coverage by the halftone). These controls allow for thousands of variations, including various "retro" effects, higher LPI pinhole effects, or break-line effects. Halftone effects defined in this way are embedded and saved into Wasatch's Imaging Configurations, to be used as stable components of production workflows.

The halftone effects can also be saved to a library folder, for easy sharing between different configurations and different systems.

Find "Halftone Effects" under the "Color" menu on Wasatch SoftRIP's main window, or on the "Color Transforms" window.



Some good starting points can be selected from the "Current Effect" drop-down list. After that, the "Application" and "Spot Function" drop-down lists provide access to variations of the selected digital halftone.

Current Effect Examples:
Variations of Sport Mesh Simulation
    LPI Examples:

2 LPI
           
6 LPI
           

    Angles Examples:

Angle 0
           
Angle 45
           
Angle 90
           

    Ellipse Coefficient Examples:

0.1 Elipse Coefficient
           
1Elipse Coefficient
           

    Density Examples:

1.0 Density
           
5.0 Density
           
10.0 Density
           
Variations of Ripstop Fabric Simulation
    LPI Examples:

2 LPI
           
4 LPI
           
6 LPI
           

    Angles Examples:

Angle 15
           
Angle 45
           
Angle 75
           

    Ellipse Coefficient Examples:

0.01 Elipse Coefficient
           
0.005 Elipse Coefficient
           
0.005 Elipse Coefficient
           

    Density Examples:

1.0 Density
           
0.1 Density
           
Variations of Durability White
    LPI Examples:

35 LPI
           
15 LPI
           
5 LPI
           

    Angles Examples:

Angle 0
           
Angle 45
           

    Ellipse Coefficient Examples:

0.3 Elipse Coefficient
           
0.6 Elipse Coefficient
           
1.0 Elipse Coefficient
           

    Helpful Hint:

    When designing new effects, it is a good practice to test by using "RIP Only" to place an entry into the Print Queue, and to then right click on that entry and use Data View to see the actual effect in raw output data. This can save a lot of time and trouble when testing the halftone effect.

Application:

  • HOLES uses the digital halftone to punch holes through the printed layers of ink. Large elliptical holes, around 2 LPI, can be used for various sorts of "Sport Mesh" effects, and finer holes around 35 LPI, may improve hand feel by introducing regular pinholes to the print. See Wasatch's marketing video for some illustrations.

  • DURABILITYWHITE is specifically designed for use with the white generation method of "Replace black ink with black substrate". When used properly, it organizes the halftone into an AM pattern in areas where the ink fades to fabric. This may improve durability in DTF prints.

  • SIMPLEHALFTONE replaces the normal digital FM halftone with an AM screen, for "retro" print effects.

Spot Function:

Classic halftones such as "EUCLIDEANSPOT" and "ROUNDSPOT" have been included. In addition to these classic halftones are Wasatch's special spot functions, such as "SPORTMESHSPOT" and "CROSSMESHSPOT", for popular garment-oriented effects.

Halftone Geometry Controls:

Controls for the LPI, angles, ellipse shape, and density are all available for making thousands of variations possible. NOTE: When using "HOLES", increasing the "density" value will make the holes larger.

Limit effects to specific channels

Sometimes we want to limit the halftone effect to a single color channel, commonly white. The effect can be suppressed in channels where it is not wanted by entering a negative number for "Angle". Simply enter a "-1" for angle for any channel where the halftone effect is not wanted.

Notes Area:

An area for notes is provided, and we strongly recommend updating it and maintaining it for creative new effects.

Save Settings to Library:

This allows you to save your creative work to an XML file in the subfolder "halftoneEffects". From there it can quickly be selected for use in alternative Imaging Configurations, or transferred to other systems, to install your effect on other installations of Wasatch SoftRIP.

These tools all act together to allow your production shop to create its own special set of options for digital DTF or DTG printing.