Tone Curve Compensation of Multiple Color Halftoning Screen Printing for Heterogeneous Fabrics

Abstract For mass production, multiple color halftoning screen printing (MCHSP) can be considered as the alternative textile printing technology when vivid color gradation is needed and the cost of digital printing is a concern. Essentially, MCHSP utilizes the same equipment as traditional screen printing to print overlapping multiple color gradation under halftoning patterns by applying dedicated treatments on color separation and calibration. To ensure color quality, equipment calibration and tone curve compensation are required to compensate for the variables arising from equipment setup and heterogeneous fabrics. In this research, the authors present a procedure of tone curve compensation to eliminate the discrepancy from heterogeneous fabrics. The experimental results based on 55 samples of 44 different fabrics show the effectiveness of compensation and reveal the distribution of average compensation percentage across fabrics.