76

UNBELIEVABLE IMPLEMENTS OF THE PREPIXEL ERA

PRINTER'S FRIEND: THE 0XYM0R0NIC "HIGHLIGHT DOT." The photo, above left, is how most photography appeared in
print until the 1990s, when the chore of making halftones was lifted by interested designers from the shoulders of the
printer. In order to save themselves the extra work of making a good halftone, printers invented the myth of the "high¬
light dot," which maintained that due to dot gain and dot loss on the press, a halftone must start out as middle gray
so that when printed, the darkest grays would become black and the lightest highlight dot areas would drop out.
It never worked that way. What happened was that the highlight dots became darker still, and the darkest
areas of the halftone never really gained so much ink to exceed about 77% gray. In my experience there
::. has never been a class of workers more adept at devising client-confounding excuses than the printer,
Щ-. unless it would be home remodeling contractors. The photo, above right, shows how completely
thrilling a halftone can look when processed correctly.

PRINTER'S FOLLY: THE CRUSTY EDGE. In the
old days of letterpress printing, a halftone
that graduated from gray to 0%, or paper
white, would often develop, after repeated
imprints, a dirty edge from the metal plate
bumping against the paper. In offset printing
the problem was never so acute, although
fear of the edge remains. I argue that even if
a noticeable 3% dot separates ink from
paper white, it is better than intentionally
creating a highlight dot of 3% that always
dot gains to 7%, producing a highlight that
is no highlight at all.

CRUSTY EDGES. Left, enlarged movie ad originally printed on newsprint shows an ink-engorged
halo at the rim where the halftone stops. I actually like these slightly darkened edges, which seem
to outline the shape, unless they're ridiculous, as above right. This overambitious example of
routing of the metal plate is one of the many ways, including manually scratching highlights into
halftones, that printers attempted to make up for murky halftone camera work.

LOGO, FONT a LETTERING BIBLE

Three phenomena have revolutionized
the world of printing. First, German
printing presses have become so fool¬
proof and automatic that perfect registration
has become the rule, not the exception.

Second, Asian printing firms (with German
presses) have taken color book printing away
from American printing houses. I suppose it's
true that many of the employees are not paid
commensurate with any ethical standard,
but lemme tell ya...! If you are foolish
enough to have a four-color book printed
in the USA, you'll get "color proofs" to
check that are dye subs, "color keys" or just
high-quality laser prints. If any of these don't
look right, they'll tell you the problem is "only
in the proof." Asian printers think nothing of
firing up the presses to actually run off sever¬
al dozen copies of the book on the actual
paper stock! Then they gladly make any
requested changes!

Third, gang-run print shops have demysti¬
fied high-quality, short-run, four-color print¬
ing, making it available to the masses at pop¬
ular prices, too.

I laugh when printers tell me they need a
"match print" proof as a guide to "get the col¬
ors right." First of all, they never get the col¬
ors right. In thirty years of having my work
printed in newspapers, magazines and books,
they never got it right, except perhaps 10 per¬
cent of the time. Secondly, all they have to do

77

to get the colors right is to ink the presses
right, check their color bars on the sides of
the press sheet to make sure 50% magenta is
50% magenta and 100% cyan is 100% cyan,
and so on. Then the job will be right. Gang-
run print shops have proven this.

The point that I am trying to make in
concluding this little swing down memory
lane is that every day I feel thankful for
all that I can do, all by myself, on my own lit¬
tle Macintosh, the capabilities of which eas¬
ily exceed $300,000 worth of graphic arts
equipment and encompass the labors of per¬
haps two dozen people, a little less than
twenty years ago. ■

MADE BY PARA-TONE INC., UNDER Тт.П.ТППС ONE OR MORE OF THE FOLLOWING
U.S, PATS. 1820867-1963778-2470093 Г.!£,Т?"І™!!!.!Г CANADIAN PATS. 343495-46

ZIP-A-T0NE: Printers used to charge an arm and a leg for stripping halftones, or flat shaded areas, into a speci¬
fied part of a layout. And they'd complain about it, too. The answer? Do it yourself with easy to use Zip-A-Tone.
Just cut out a section of this self-adhering plastic film and trim to fit. Benday shading films are still available in
a wide variety of patterns, from typical halftone dot to wacky patterns of every description. But avoid carelessly
overlapping two pieces of Zip-A-Tone, or a moiré might result. To paraphrase an old song, "When-a two halftone
screens, They-a cross in between, That's a moiré___"

PRINTER'S FAILURE:
BAD REGISTRATION.
Virtually all printing
in the 1960s and 1970s
(aside from high-end
printing) was off-register
for at least part of the
press run. Maybe not as
badly, however, as in the
mock example above.
Nowadays, even high¬
speed web-printed news¬
papers—increasingly
going toward full-
color—tend to have
excellent registration.
What a great time
to be alive!