gradients

[Chris Wool]

hi
as you save a eps you should have the chance to adjust the fountane steps the more steps the less type of banding

chris

[Mark Candlin]

Ive spent more time trying to work around this problem than anything else.
I found regardless of how many fountain steps i applied to a graduated tint in corel I STILL got steps showing on output.
The only way around the problem I found was by opening up the fill area(exported from corel)in photoshop as an eps and adding .3% noise to the fill.
Export the file back out and import into corel. Then work on any other elements and export as a eps.
Once printed the steps are gone. The noise diffused the steps.

Iam sure there is another solution, if u find one let me know!!

[francopas]

thanks guys i will try out your suggestions and let you knoe the results.. 😛

[RobGF]

I’d go with what Sticky Mark suggests.

As you said you’re doing inkjet I am assuming that you are working with a PostScript workflow. Depending on your RIP, postscript itself only handles 256 shades of gray. So if you had a tint running from 100 to 0% ink (let’s say Cyan only) there would be about 256 steps. In this example the steps become obvious over distance: ie, going from 100 to 0% over 5″ (12.7cm) might look wonderful doing the same gradient over a distance of 30″ (76.2cm) may step. The exact distance where stepping would become obvious would depend on the number of tonal steps (fewer steps, more obvious), the number of process colours in the blend, the effectiveness of the stochastic screening your RIP lays down, etc.

Adding noise to a (rasterised) blend is often a very effective way to reduce obvious stair stepping. Other things to examine might be in your RIP software. Some vendors have options in their RIPs that enable them to calculate more shades or steps than PostScript does (some stuff that runs oem Harlequin does, for example).

Of course if I have misread your questions feel free to slap me 🙂

[francopas]

sorted out the problem………..
i just created the gradient in photoshop 7, made sure dither was applied and got a printed result that i was more than happy with,
one problem i had was that if i did exactly the same in photoshop cs the printed result was still stepped, not as bad as the artwork i was supplied with but noticeable enough….. 😮