Designing a plaid photopolymer plate

I’m trying to replicate a plaid tie pattern. It doesn’t have to be an exact replica.. but close. Is there anything I should keep in mind when designing the plate?

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This is the tie, if that is helpful.

image: image.jpg

image.jpg

Are you wanting to print that image of the tie, or do you want to create that kind of plaid in, say, a rectangle? In textile design class we created plaids by laying out the stripes of color so that when they crossed they created the effect desired. In this case, green, yellow, blue, purple, light blue, grey, crossed at right angles by varying width stripes of grey. All the stripes ought to be halftones or tint blocks to achieve the effect of the tie image. We worked with solid transparent inks to achieve the same kind of effect.

Bob

the plaid in a rectangle is what I’m after, Bob.
Do you think it would work to do the greys as tint blocks and the others with halftones or should all stripes be one or the other?

Unless you want the printed image to have the dot texture of the tie image, you could use solids in transparent colors, though those are harder to find. If you are creating the images for platemaking using a computer program like PhotoShop, you could make the different bars a 40% or 50% screen at about a value of 50DPI to achieve the look of the tie image, which is woven fabric. That would allow you to run opaque or transparent ink. I think for uniformity of image texture you should use the same approach for all the colors. Also remember that you will need a separate plate for each color, but for example the yellow, dark blue, and light blue bands are the same width and could all be printed from the same plate of just one bar (or two for a repeat), moved to the different positions for each run. You also have the potential on a large enough plaid area to repeat the different stripes — the repeat pattern needs to be worked out depending on the size of the square you choose.

It depends on what look you are after and your choice of inks. I think, though, that you would be happier with the result using screened blocks. Just remember also that the 50% screen means that you get 50% of the color intensity, so you may need to play with the ink colors to get the shade you want.

Good luck with it — plaids can be fun.

Bob

I would actually suggest making a collograph out of a piece of fabric by glueing it down to a piece of masonite, inking it up, printing it in black ink, and then scanning that print.
Digitally cut your bars out of the textured scan and then digitally rotate/overlap/collage them using photoshop to achieve your desired effect. Once you have them overlapped and your design created in separate layers, it’s a matter of assigning colors to the same layer, bitmapping, and then having the plates made up.
If someone came to me with this idea, that is how I would approach it.

Excellent advice. Appreciate it.