Real World Scanning and Halftones (3rd Edition) (Real World)

The section on halftones teaches you how to produce decent halftone images, first by explaining how halftones work and then by explaining such issues as frequency, gray levels, spot variation, spot gain, spot shapes, and the role of printers and software in creating halftones. There's also a discussion of stochastic screening and how to create blends and reduce moiré and other patterns. The last chapters here help you fine-tune your halftone settings and learn a bit about PostScript operators for halftones and scanning.

The third and last section focuses on using image applications to work with scans, tonal and color corrections, and halftones. This discussion includes Adobe Photoshop, Micrografx Picture Publisher, Corel Photo-Paint, Ulead PhotoImpact, Equilibrium's DeBabelizer, Adobe Illustrator, Macromedia FreeHand, CorelDRAW, Adobe PageMaker, and QuarkXPress. The authors also look at a few scanning applications and offer tips on using them.

Throughout the book the authors provide plenty of images and screen shots to illustrate their points, and a full-color section helps bring some of these examples to life. There's lots of technical discussion, but since each chapter builds on the previous ones and the basic terminology is put forth clearly, you can leave off wherever you wish and still have a lot of new knowledge to apply to your scans and halftones. --Kathleen Caster

Product Description

With the advent of desktop publishing came the democratization of graphic design. Which means that these days, with the right equipment, just about anyone can produce graphically sophisticated documents--or clumsy ill-conceived messes. To make sure you end up with the former, you need this comprehensive guide! Realizing that many of today's desktop publishers come to the task with no formal design or graphics training, authors David Blatner, Glenn Fleishman, Steve Roth, and Conrad Chavez, detail both the theory and practice of producing top-notch scans and halftones. Through tips, techniques, step-by-step instructions, and real-world examples, you'll learn how to scan, sharpen, and output your images as well as how to correct color and tone. Throughout, the emphasis is on not just how to perform a given task but why it makes sense to do so in a certain way. Filled with sure-fire techniques and practical discussions of today's software and hardware, when it comes to halftones and scans, this guide covers it all!

In the latest edition, we've restructured the book around the scanning and digitzing workflow: starting with scanners and digital cameras; moving through correction; then into output onto ink jet, film, screen, and (extensively) offset press as halftones.

Our Web site at www dot rwsh dot com contains a downloadable chapter and other information about the book, or you can use Amazon.com's Inside the Book feature to read pages here.


I'd call this a "Try it."   December 3, 2002
 6 out of 6 found this review helpful

Frequently, I find that I have to buy books that are overly technical for my purposes in order to get all the info I want. This book suits me, (though it may not suit the needs of a graphics profession). There are no buyer's guides to specific models of scanners here. However, there is a lot of detail about how scanners, scanning software and graphics programs work. The authors provide such arcana as the formula for determining what size a scanned image will be (depending on the options you pick) and goodies like this. There is info on file formats, compression, how to choose resolution and what influences the outcome of scans and how to correct the result. There is also a lot of information most applicable to professional print work, for which I have no particular use, except that info of this type helps to fill out my picture of how digital imaging works. If you want suggestions for scanning projects to do with your kids, look elsewhere, but if you're interested in the theory of scanners I would recommend this book. I'll also mention that, in my view, the writing is clear and well-organized and if I occasionally must pause to consider it's only because the material requires a little thought. This is not rocket science, but neither is it Sponge Bob and the authors treat it accordingly.


Great title...   February 5, 2001
 12 out of 18 found this review helpful

I've learned some thngs from this book, however like one other reviewer stated, just when you thought it was going to get to the good stuff, some stupid flip remark would be made and the chapter or discussiong would end. Very difficult reading. Too much about prepress. Not enough about photoshop, scanning and color management. Reads like childish manerishums. Author's have very immature writing styles.


Too basic, no meat   October 12, 2000
 24 out of 31 found this review helpful

I bought the book sight unseen based on the glowing reviews here.

I wanted to get specific, detailed insight to which scanners worked well, and how to get great and consistant color out of them.

I got none of that. There was no detailed instruction on how to make and use color profiles with scanners.

They talk "about" scanning quite a lot, but give no hard specifics. Often the advice is that "more expensive scanners work better." That's something that I didn't need the book to tell me.

It does cover a great deal of basics for first-timer users, but little for people who already know how to pump pixels.

Every time I thougt it might get into some of the details I wanted, the chapter ended.

It is written too casually for me. It appears to be written by a few guys who have been around publishing. It reads like a collection of casual "shop talk," more than hard info. The authors occasionally get in over their heads technically and make some mistakes trying to explain things that they admit they don't understand, like how JPEG compression works.

I returned my copy, a great thing about Amazon. I got nothing out of it. One cool trick they suggested for Photoshop didn't even work. (c) 2000 kenrockwell.com