I print fine art on coated-canvas using a professional inkjet printer. The images are very clear and detailed. I have very little experience screen printing, but I have read there are ~300 dpi screens. Is it possible to get the same level of clarity and detail using screen printing? Would screen printing using a high resolution screen produce similar results to printing a 300 ppi image using an inkjet printer?
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What kind of colors do you have in mind? Spot colors or 4 color process?– JohnBAug 11, 2015 at 1:22
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@JohnB 4 color process. I'm talking about full-color printing, possibly with extra colors to expand gamut or to create cleaner gradients -- like inkjet printers do.– user13497Aug 11, 2015 at 2:07
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1I can write a more detailed explanation as an answer tomorrow, but the short answer is "no". You're going to have a significant loss of quality from the color separation process– JohnBAug 11, 2015 at 2:46
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1 Answer
In terms of resolution
No, not even close. I have never seeing a high res screen printing that match a nice inkjet print...
Well, there are bad inkjet printers out there, and there are some very smooth ones.
A screen print halftone resolution for color selection is arround 50-95 lpi.
You could choose not to use a halftone screen printing but to use an error difussion, but this is given by the maximum resolution of the silk, which is arround 150-175.
Let us asume there is a screen with 300 threads per inch. An inkjet printer can deliver a dot lets be conservative, say arround 1/1200. So. It is at least 4 times more resolution.
An art by itself
I must add. Silk print it is not only for comercial printing or for reproducing digital images.
You can draw directly on the silk with a crayon, use paper masks, use it very freeely.
You can also prepare digital images specificly for silk print, they can be without a patern, just solid, or with a diferent kind of paterns, you can use the same error difussion with the intent that we see the pattern itself. You can combine inks in the moment of print, use puffy inks, add earth on the top of the ink, use transparent inks, etc.
That would produce a fine art for itself.
