Whether conventional, stochastic or hybrid, or to use their respective abbreviations AM, FM or XM, halftone screens have long been associated with improving quality. From the mid-nineties to the mid-noughties there was a rush of screening advances that, together with the switch from analogue to digital pre-press, coincided with a rapid increase in quality.
Both AM and FM screens had benefits, but also failings. Neither managed to consistently solve all of the problems associated with halftone screen printing.
“Despite better AM screening we still had significant colour problems in areas of colour shifts, moiré or screen clashes that produced visible artefacts in the colour images,” says industry consultant Andy Tribute. “We also had increasing difficulty handling higher screen values to get better image quality.
“In FM screening, we still had problems handling flat tints and vignettes, where images appeared grainy or lacked smooth transitions, and in the areas of highlights and solids where we lost detail as the rosettes began to disappear due to ink fill-in.”
Hybrid, or XM screening, was intended to solve the problems associated with AM and FM screens, by incorporating the best elements of both; however, the results were far from guaranteed.
“While this could produce excellent results, in operation it could have the problems of both AM and FM screening,” adds Tribute.
At Drupa, the industry saw the arrival of a fourth screening technology based on Hamillroad’s Auraia-II DM (digitally modulated) screening. Hamillroad chief executive Andy Cave explains: “DM screening is so named because it digitally modulates each and every pixel that it produces, rather than repeating a fixed pattern of dots, as in AM screening, or randomly marking a pixel, as in FM screening. The result is an unprecedented quality of screening, which is easy to plate and print using any CTP device.”
Auraia works by analysing each pixel it produces in the context of the surrounding pixels to eliminate problems like dot gain and patterning. Cave has claimed it can replicate the quality of a 400lpi AM screen using existing high-end violet and thermal CTPs. The first manufacturer to licence the technology is ECRM and printers could see the results on its Drupa stand.
There is already one user in the Australian commercial print market: Crystal Media in Brisbane. Managing director Gavin Allen says the Auraia-II “consistently produces printed results of a quality far in excess of what you might think possible using traditional methods”.
The system was installed by Hamillroad’s local distributor, G2 Solutions. Managing director Bernie Hockings agrees that Crystal Media has made major leaps in quality, and says there are other advantages.
“The major benefits are the reduction in ink usage, improved drying times and lack of set-off. When printing on plastics, there is a massive improvement in the drying and the quality of the production. They currently run the Azura TS plate, which are rated to 200-line screen, 2% to 98% dot. With Auraia they hold 1% to 99%.”
Hockings adds: “There are a few newspaper sites in New Zealand seeing the benefits of ink reduction and a much wider tonal range than has been possible with tradition screens.
“In turn, the shadows are much more open and the images on newsprint appear more vibrant and clean. The ability to utilise existing CTP hardware means that again big quality improvements can been seen with only changes to the RIP software being necessary.”
What’s the catch?
However, there remains a catch that could prevent the widespread adoption of DM screening by conventional printers: it is currently only available on systems using the Harlequin RIP and not the Adobe PDF Print Engine-based RIPs that drive the majority of commercial offset workflows.
Here in Australia, ECRM technology is distributed by Currie Group. Product manager Andrew Dunn says there are around 250 users of ECRM RIPs in the country, across both metal and polyester platesetters. He calls it a “huge leap forward” and reckons DM screening should be of interest to “absolutely anyone who wants better quality”, both web or sheetfed printers.
But not everyone is convinced. One analyst, who asked not to be named, was sceptical of the notion that commercial printers were really crying out for this kind of technological leap.
“The only market that still gets excited by screening to any great extent is flexo. In that space there is more reason to get hot under the collar about your screens and that’s all down to the challenges of the flexo platemaking and printing process,” he tells ProPrint.
“I’m happy to be proved wrong and discover there are still some craftsmen printers in Australia for whom this is just what they’ve been waiting for, but I doubt it. I would imagine most folks have other higher priorities to attend to before getting bothered by screening.”
Hockings couldn’t disagree more. He is adamant that this technology will offer users a major uplift, although he does concede there are hurdles.
“The major impediment to the uptake in Australia is getting the masses to understand what this technology can do. Improvements in quality and processes, not just cutting the price, is something the industry has to adopt if we are to stop the current demise of print companies Australia wide and try to return the industry to sustained profitability.”
Hybrid hurdle
Hamillroad’s Cave states that technology can easily be integrated into an APPE RIP, but this would require cooperation from the likes of Agfa, Fuji, Heidelberg, Kodak and Screen, all of whom have their own versions of hybrid screening technology.
Some believe this could prove to be an insurmountable hurdle, particularly as current hybrid screening technologies are considered by many to be “good enough” if not 100% perfect 100% of the time.
However, Cave argues the technology will provide a significant sales advantage to any manufacturer Hamillroad partners with. “We have a very carefully considered sales strategy here,” he says. “We’re not aiming to sell this to everyone, but to a select few companies so that they can differentiate what they offer and maximise their return on it.
“The benefits for the one who jumps first should be significant, because nothing else on the market comes close – it’s superior to Staccato, Spekta, Sublima and we believe other FM screens – so it will help them sell their CTP, workflow and consumables contracts.”
Screening has undoubtedly come a long way since the early ’90s although the speed of change has slowed over the past five to 10 years. The appearance of a radical new technique could be just the shake-up the sector needs.
ECRM DMS key benefits
• Near photographic quality of images. No visible rosette patterning and the images have the look of continuous tone photographs
• ECRM DMS quality is equivalent to 300-400lpi AM and hybrid screens. Printers who would not use 300–400lpi screening can now print them on standard equipment without changing operating procedures
• Very clear small type reversals out of tints or solids particularly with a tinted colour text readable down to 1.5-point
• Very sharp images
• Very smooth vignettes that blend with white paper and flat tints without noise or graininess
• Highlight dots can be held right down to 0% and shadows dots held open right up to 100%
• No incidence of moiré or colour shifts
• Matching of Pantone spot colours handled much better within the overall CMYK gamut, where the colour would look like a special solid colour thus saving a printer having to run an extra special
spot colour
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