#Adobe Streamline
4 messages in this thread
Thom, I'm curious about something. You mentioned using your Microtek DA
for 1-bit scans and Digital Darkroom for scanning photos. First question,
using the DA, I've found a lot of "noise" in the white areas of my artwork
(random dots all over the place), once I open it in Streamline, but
Streamline tends to ignore it all, fortunately. Do you adjust anything in
the DA before scanning?
Second question, we'd like to learn more about scanning photos for
half-toning, both for Laserwriter output for some in-house things, as well
as through a Lino for some other jobs. I haven't spent enough time with
the Dig. Dkrm. manuals (confession time) but they didn't say too much about
Lino output. What procedures do you use to get something camera ready for
the printshop? At what point is the screen added (is it done by the Lino
driver, or by me)?
BTW, I learned yesterday from Deneba that the new version of Canvas (2.1),
which I just got, correctly handles more of the so-called TIFF Standard
File formats and that it does now produces TIFFs that Streamline can
handle. Version 2.0 of Canvas did not. I didn't get a chance to try it
today, and I'll be out of the office tomorrow, but one of these days . . .
John,
We haven't experienced any problem scanning 1-bit stuff with Microtek's
DA (or with VersaScan, their dedicated program that we've used for years
previous to the new DA) at all. It's _very_important_ to keep the glass on
your scanner clean, and dirty glass is about the only problem we've ever
had with crud in the white spaces (although there is occasionally a wee bit
of flack – it's easily ignored by Streamline, or "erased" before the file
is saved).
When preparing photos for Lino (or CG) output, we follow a pretty
simple procedure. First, we invoke Digital Darkroom, and scan out of that.
When the picture is scanned, we then adjust brightness and contrast to
provide optimal appearance.
We then "flash" the photo, duplicating with DD what printers do in the
darkroom. This drops off the top and bottom 10% of the blacks and whites,
providing a less harsh appearance and eliminating "holes." To do that,
choose "Modify Main Map (CMD M)" and change the values from 1 to 256 with
values from 25 to 225. This will soften or "flash" the picture. Choose
"Map to Image" to make the change permanent, and then save crop and save
the image with the appropriate name. Between this and XPress's new
built-in dot-gain correction for Lino's, we're getting great halftones!
–Thom
Gee, Thanks Thom for the great explanation. I assume then the program that
is sending to the Lino is what applies the "line screen" or "dot screen"
that the offset process will need to print the half-tone. Is that right?
I don't use Xpress, we have Pagemaker 3.02 for the Mac. Does Xpress, if
that's what does the screens, allow you to specify what kind of screen it
uses? I'm not a printing expert, but I do know that certain kinds of
printing and papers need more or less density in their screens.
John,
You're exactly right – the DTP program (or graphics program) creates
the halftone when you're driving the image to the Lino or printer, and you
can usually, at that time, choose the screen frequency (100 line, 120 line,
etc.), angle (45 degree, 90 degree, etc.), and type (dot, line, ellipse,
etc.) at that time or during a setup process.
–Thom