Imagesetters were the Tyrannosaurus Rex of graphic arts service companies in the 1980s. They did everything bigger, better, faster and cheaper, and took the commercial printing world by storm. They were the 1st totally digital commercial output devices which used lasers to make highres films for the industry.
The advent and subsequent maturity of inkjet technology has put most imagesetters out to pasture long ago. Yet, nothing has quite come along to completely replace their capabilities. Inkjet output, while lush and perfect at arms length, are smeared and fuzzy when you look at it under a loupe. When transferred to polymer photogravure plate, these fuzzy divots turn the photopolymer mushy, vs the hard, solid points needed to form a good, sturdy plate.
Aquatint screens are high resolution dot screens, used to produce a random pattern of accurate dots on polymer plates. Aquatint screens are similar to the rosin dust employed in the step of "dusting" plates, with copper plate photogravure to form a similar, sharp random dot pattern.
So , one of the keys to creating rich, uniform, continuous tone intaglio prints is to have a well-made aquatint screen. Intaglio Editions invested in customizing the highest resolution aquatint screen we could get for our process to make some of the most continuous tone, photogravure-quality intaglio prints from polymer plate. Nothing we have found commercially is as fine, nor as smooth. We could all accept more graphic-arts looking prints, print using other alternative processes or go back to making copper gravure plates using rosin dust!
My sense is it will go back to the way things were done during the time of Albrecht Durer, the founder of printmaking, where artists would go to the specialists and, working with them directly, would have their pictures inscribed professionally by the workmen who knew how to do it best.
So what killed the one remaining T-Rex? My personal guess would be solitude.
The advent and subsequent maturity of inkjet technology has put most imagesetters out to pasture long ago. Yet, nothing has quite come along to completely replace their capabilities. Inkjet output, while lush and perfect at arms length, are smeared and fuzzy when you look at it under a loupe. When transferred to polymer photogravure plate, these fuzzy divots turn the photopolymer mushy, vs the hard, solid points needed to form a good, sturdy plate.
Aquatint screens are high resolution dot screens, used to produce a random pattern of accurate dots on polymer plates. Aquatint screens are similar to the rosin dust employed in the step of "dusting" plates, with copper plate photogravure to form a similar, sharp random dot pattern.
So , one of the keys to creating rich, uniform, continuous tone intaglio prints is to have a well-made aquatint screen. Intaglio Editions invested in customizing the highest resolution aquatint screen we could get for our process to make some of the most continuous tone, photogravure-quality intaglio prints from polymer plate. Nothing we have found commercially is as fine, nor as smooth. We could all accept more graphic-arts looking prints, print using other alternative processes or go back to making copper gravure plates using rosin dust!
My sense is it will go back to the way things were done during the time of Albrecht Durer, the founder of printmaking, where artists would go to the specialists and, working with them directly, would have their pictures inscribed professionally by the workmen who knew how to do it best.
So what killed the one remaining T-Rex? My personal guess would be solitude.
About the Author:
Jon Lybrook is an artist, owner and lead tech at Intaglio Editions in Boulder, Colorado. Intaglio Editions provides fine art photogravure plate and printmaking services to artists, photographers and printmakers using polymer plates.
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