The world of print is not made up entirely of cyan, magenta, yellow, and black inks printed in a regular grid of halftone spots. Sure, that’s all good for most printing, but sometimes — when you want to optimize the quality of your print materials — you need to wander outside the box and play with different technologies.
FM Screening
For example, I’ve been a fan of FM (frequency-modulated) halftone screening for almost two decades. FM screening — also called stochastic screening — is a way to print a tint of a color more like an inkjet than a traditional halftone. That is, instead of a regular grid of spots that get bigger (in darker areas) or smaller (in lighter areas), you make a bunch of tiny spots closer together in darker areas and farther apart in lighter areas. And, just as inkjet printers can create photo-realistic images better than a traditional printing press, FM screens can express more detail (and even do so with lower-resolution images than traditional AM screens).
There has been a great deal of debate over the past decade about FM vs. AM screening, but the problem is that much of the commentary seems to come from people working at RIP manufacturers. In other words, they’re not always the most unbiased of observers. The main argument against FM screening has been that it’s difficult to manage on press. However, many people report the opposite — especially in direct to press and digital printing situations, FM screening can be a very viable option. Plus, you never have to worry about moire patterns!
While FM screening shows up in some platesetter RIPs, there is one third-party option that I think every printer (and possibly designer) should know about, which is Icefields from ISIS Imaging. The ability to create your own FM-screened images means that you can specify how each image on your page is screened. For example, in a magazine about gardening, there may be one image on each page that needs to just exude quality and detail. The other images and background tints could be traditionally screened. Use Icefields on that one image! It’s certainly worth checking out, especially if you’re a output provider.
Hexachrome
While FM screening can make your colors pop better, another option is to print your images with more than just four colors. For example, you could create a bump plate with a single spot color to help bring out a special color. Another option is to use hexachrome printing — a 6-color solution originally created by Pantone.
While QuarkXPress has had support for hexachrome for many years, InDesign doesn’t offer built-in support for it. Fortunately, I saw this nice article by Brian Lawler about how to use Photoshop CS4 to convert RGB to hexachrome. I’ve seen a number of other hexachrome-related posts on the web, too, including this one.
Are there other technologies out there that you’ve used? Other fun ideas to help enhance print jobs?
This article was last modified on December 19, 2021
This article was first published on March 31, 2009
Commenting is easier and faster when you're logged in!
