There are different dot shapes for screening: round, square, euclidean, elliptical, ... which one is the best for flexography? When choosing the dot shape for plate screening, it is important to consider the characteristics of the different geometries and their influence on the printed result. When the plate is inked by the anilox roll and [...]
What is the best resolution for images to be printed in flexography? Well, it depends first of all on the distance that the printed product will be looked at by the viewer: this will determine the suitable linescreen that the image will have on the printed product. A general guideline for AM screening defines a [...]
How many resolutions do we need to know in flexography? There are four important information related to resolution within the flexo workflow. 1# The resolution of the anilox roll, or its line-screen or cell-count, that is the number of cells engraved on the surface by linear unit of measure. We express it, in the metric [...]
Flexography will definitely benefit from latest ISO standards on Graphic technology: ISO/PAS 15339-1:2015 - Printing from digital data across multiple technologies - Part 1: Principles ISO/PAS 15339-2:2015 - Printing from digital data across multiple technologies - Part 2: Characterized reference printing conditions, CRPC1-CRPC7 ISO 17972-4:2018 - Colour data exchange format (CxF/X) - Part 4: Spot [...]
Have you ever wondered why we need to use different screen angles in flexography? First of all we need to remember that we consider the screen angles when we look at the final printed product, so the parameters we set in the prepress/imaging workflow are meant to obtain the angles as described. Then we need [...]
The information about minimum dot indicates what is the size of the minimum printing dot that appears on the plate. This size is normally expressed in microns (µm), or, less commonly, as a percentage of a given linescreen, and it is set as a threshold in plate imaging to obtain such size on the finished [...]
The term “round dot” refers to the screening algorithm that tends to draw round shaped dots. Let’s not forget, however, that the original digital file is made of square pixels. These pixels are the binary information that is sent to the laser to write the image: write / don’t write = on / off. Therefore, [...]
One of the most frequent activities in prepress editing for flexography is the setup of run color control patches. Such targets may include different elements like a solid 100%, different tonal values and other elements like impression and slur patches. When using Adobe Illustrator for editing complex jobs featuring many colours, it might be useful [...]
FlexoTech magazine published an interesting article about color management for prepress in flexography on April 2013 and September 2013 issues. The article was written by Stefano d’Andrea and Steve Donegan of Graphic Republik and it covers subjects about prepress before platemaking, with particular attention to colour management. You can download the two parts of the article [...]
