Why Film ~ I started my screenprint career in 1984 as a darkroom tech for a company that printed stickers and vinyl products. Back then everything was shot with a stat camera to clear film for burning on screens.

   Imagesetters came along shortly after, they used a laser to expose the film. The work produced was sharper and cleaner than the film produced on camera. An imagesetter produces dark, perfect, hard edge halftones and line art using photographic film or paper. The registration is near perfect! I can run a job and come back a month later and run another film for that job and it will register!

  The downside to imagesetters is that they are expensive, precision machines. Photographic film is required and film requires processing in a darkroom. But if you want quality output, this is the only way to do it. An imagesetter is the only output device that will give you a hard edge dot. No matter what you have heard, inkjets, laser printers & thermal film imagers can not give you imagesetter quality. These devices produce little fuzzy dots that choke or spread depending on how long you burn your screens.

  The people selling inkjet transparency film claim to have better registration than laser or thermal film because the substrate does not get heated in any way. The problem is that in order to get prints dark enough most inkjet rips will double hit or triple hit each dot. In other words, you get a whole lot of spread and overprinting before ever getting to the press. Add to that the natural spread of ink on film.  So next time an inkjet advertisement  says ‘imagesetter quality’ know that they are referring to the plastic and not the output.

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