Epson Haftone?

[RalphLambrecht]

I'm trying to use an Epson3880 and Pictorico transparancies to print digital negatives for contact printing.My problem seems to be that the halftone pattern I created in PS is clean and crisp but prints as a stochastic dither.How can I get the printer to print a clear and crisp halftone without going through dithering?
FMIW: I'm printing at 2880 dpi(photo quality)Is there any way to turn stichastic dithering off?Would an alternative printer driver work?

 

[jeffreyg]

I am using my 3880 to make enlarged negatives for pt/pd printing. Although they are VERY close to the ones I've made on x-ray duplicating the trade off in tonal controls for more difficult negatives and moments of laziness is worth it. I have Dan Burkholder's software which I usually tweak but recently started making my own curve adjustments. I have not used halftones though. What I do (from scanned film negatives) is to make a positive and invert then adjust with curves to match the tonal range of a previously made negative that worked for a pt/pd print. I scan in RGB then do the positive in Gray scale but then switch back to RGB. I then print on Pictorico OHP. I use the profile for Moab luster surface papers. Not a very scientific approach but it works for me.

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[Richard Boutwell]

The whole point of going through the halftone step is to generate something that approaches or approximates a continuous tone image when using an image setter— your digital halftone screen is used by the rip to get the dots small enough and close enough together so that it appears to be a continuous tone image when in fact it is just made up of just individual spaces between fully exposed dots.

Since there is no image setter to deal with there is no need to make a halftone pattern when printing inkjet negatives. Inkjet printers are stochastic by design (both in hardware and software), and creates a continuous tone image (print or negative) without any additional work on your part. The printers dots will be much finer than anything you introduce in photoshop, but your smooth print tones are still limited by how smooth the individual ink drops are with the OEM Epson inks. The only thing that I have found to come close enough when printing with gelatin silver is the Cone digital silver inkset. It does a much better job at smoothing out the printer dots, but there is still a small chance of ink clumping together in the really smooth areas like skies or smooth snow.