[yugyug]

so does anyone know how, or know if its even possible, to somehow capture the printed 'dot patterns' that make up a printed image to a graphic file?

I'm talking about these things



you can se when magnifying a printed page. But what I would like is a digital capture, a bit like this:



though I think that is actually a simulation designed in illustrator (or maybe some plugin effect or filter? It would be interesting to know about plugin or other ways to simulate the effect, but what I would most like to do is capture the actual information at the very end of the print process when the dots are encoded, which I think is after ripping at the printer head stage (or something!) .... anyone?

[eyevaan]

use the halftone filter under sketch to apply the pattern to each channel. You can control the contrast and dot size.

or

go to color halftone under pixelate to create the effect.
NOTE: since presses do not work in RGB
you should convert the file to CMYK then use
Channel 1 Cyan = 105
Channel 2 Magenta = 75 or 45
Channel 3 Yellow = 90
Channel 4 Black = 45 or 75

[yugyug]

thanks eyevaan, though I haven't got that technique to work really well yet

may I ask, are those numbers you mention percentages of the cyan, magenta et al applied to each channel, and if so, how do you do that?
or are you talking about printing angles, which also influence the way the dots look?

[eyevaan]

Originally posted by yugyug:
thanks eyevaan, though I haven't got that technique to work really well yet

may I ask, are those numbers you mention percentages of the cyan, magenta et al applied to each channel, and if so, how do you do that?
or are you talking about printing angles, which also influence the way the dots look?

printing angles you will see in the dialog box for the halftone filter.

another control is instead of trying to do the entire file in one pass is to do each channel separately and then using multiply you will create the effect and have full control over the amount of dot and where the saturation is in the image. One note to CMYK halftones, there is an ink saturation level at about 350 Density Max or I prefer 310. This is the cumulative ink at any one point. Add the CMYK together and you've got the DMax. I understand that you are looking for an effect and not necessarily printing but to avoid the muddy look use this as a guide. Black looks best as black with the support colors changing the hue [warm it up or cool it down] instead of just using all the colors equally with 100% black.