Trying (and failing) to print gray digitally

[grlintheworld]

Hoping for some advice.

Have been trying to print some smaller gray type and think gray rules digitally on uncoated paper. No matter where I get this printed, the gray's end up all broken up and hard to read. Not crisp at all - looks like a bunch of dots rather than a solid. The printer's explanation was that the uncoated paper just soaks in too much of the ink. I'm not really willing to give up the uncoated paper, so I'm wondering if anybody has any suggestions on how I can alter my file so that this prints better?

(Same thing happens generally with any lighter color that I try to print - not just gray exclusively)...

 

[RGPW17100]

Try changing the screen angles of the CMYK.

 

[gordo]

Have been trying to print some smaller gray type and think gray rules digitally on uncoated paper.

Do you know the brand of printer you're outputting to?

gordon p

 

[Lukas Engqvist]

Smaller grey type? Exactly how small and are we talking about thin type?
Uncoated paper usually requires a coarser screening and you will find that the that dots that fit in the type area will not always match up, giving it a broken appearance.
It is not unusual for us to recommend customers to change to a Pantone colour at 100% that is equivalent to the shade of grey they trying to produce to maintain legibility of business cards where the font size and weight are too small for a % of black to adequately represent the characters. (we also sometimes have to move away from digital to offset to get the right pantone and quality)

An FM raster can sometimes let you get away with smaller type, you can make just a line of text in FM manually by setting it in Photoshop an making it error diffused at the same resolution as the maximum of your output device.

For grey lines I suggest you use a dotted line instead where the dot to space area is equivalent to your desisired screening.

 

[ljgoldberg]

The question is a little vague;

"Have been trying to print some smaller gray type and think gray rules digitally on uncoated paper. No matter where I get this printed, the gray's end up all broken up and hard to read. Not crisp at all - looks like a bunch of dots rather than a solid."

Do you mean "rules" as in "rocks" or thin straight lines?

Is the printing digital (electrostatic or inkjet) or "analog" (plates, ink, water, etc)?

The suggestion to print a solid spot color is the best of all possible solutions, but not helpful if the method is digital.

If you cannot use a spot color, use the finest possible screen ruling and adjust for the increase in dot gain when printing a three color image of C,M,K or even a double hit black duotone. Register will be very critical, prepare for higher waste or longer makeready.

Larry

 

[alic57]

As others have posted, you don't mention the machine. However, as with offset, perhaps you can consider UCR and UCA (undercolor removal and undercolor addition). Typically a 4 color process gray will be composed of all 3 primaries and some black. UCR replaces this process gray with a certain similar density of black only to produce a gray. Maybe your rig can be arranged to make this adjustment.

 

[tshark]

I am guessing since it is posted in the digital section, that is how it is being produced, so the offset solutions don't seem to reason. Otherwise, the question would not appear here if there is that option. Could someone expand on the screen angle science mentioned above? Thanks.

 

[gordo]

The OP hasn't provided any info other than in the original question - so there's a lot of speculation going on. Perhaps the OP does not even know about halftone screening.

That being said, following is a technique that I used to use to determine if I was going to have a problem with thin screened lines (when I had to use AM/XM screening UGH)

I used a graphic like the one attached. It consists (in this case) of a 1pt rule screened at 20% rotated at 10° increments created in Illustrator (GSAngles.PDF). I would bring that into Photoshop and convert to Mode --->bitmap using the dpi of the destination output device/printer a round dot halftone at the lpi used for that device. The resulting bitmap (Angles.pdf) shows how the rule at that thickness, tone value, and angle might be busted up by the screening. Not 100% accurate, but good enough to use as a guide and easy to do.

best, gordon p

 

[RGPW17100]

On our indigo we can interchange the screen angles of the CMYK to smooth out certain colors. Not sure if other digital presses or copier have this function. We will typically swap the cyan and black to achieve a smoother color especially when words become jagged.

 

[alic57]

I misspoke in a previous post. I meant to say GCR or Gray Component Replacement is sometimes used in offset to replace process grays with blacks. Perhaps some similar option exist for digital presses.