Halftone
Print method — one of 28 in the glossary
A pattern of dots of varying size used to simulate a gradient or a shade using a single colour of ink. It is how screen printing reproduces photographs and soft fades without printing every tone as its own colour. Needs a suitable mesh count and careful exposure, and very fine halftones can disappear entirely on a coarse fabric surface.
Dots instead of tones
Screen printing lays down one solid colour per screen. It cannot print fifty per cent of a colour — so shading is faked by varying the size of dots across an area and letting the eye blend them.
Small dots read as light, large dots as dark, and the transition between them reads as a gradient.
The same principle underlies newspaper and offset printing; the difference is that a screen's mesh sets a hard limit on how fine the dots can be.
Mesh count and dot size go together
A dot smaller than the mesh openings cannot hold on the screen — it washes out during exposure or fails to transfer ink.
So a fine halftone needs a high mesh count, which in turn lays down less ink, which costs opacity. That trade-off is the whole craft of printing halftones.
Line count, expressed as lines per inch, is the halftone's resolution. Higher means finer and more demanding.
Fabrics that destroy a halftone
Anything textured. Pique, oxford, corduroy, waffle and mesh all interrupt the surface, and a pattern of small dots is the first thing to break up.
Fuzzy open-end carded cotton does the same at a smaller scale, which is why halftone work goes on ring spun.
Puff ink is incompatible in principle, because every dot expands into a blob and merges with its neighbours.
Common questions
- What is a halftone in screen printing?
- A pattern of dots of varying size used to simulate shading or a gradient with a single colour of ink, since a screen can only print one solid colour at a time.
- Why do halftones need a high mesh count?
- Because a dot smaller than the mesh openings will not hold on the screen. Finer dots need finer mesh, which lays down less ink and costs opacity.
- Can you print halftones on any fabric?
- No. Textured fabrics like pique, oxford and mesh break the dot pattern up, and fuzzy carded cotton softens it. Halftone work belongs on smooth ring spun cotton.
Where this comes up
See also
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