Photo-emulsion Screen Printing

Step 4 Prepare your image

The emulsion on your screen is photosensitive; when it's exposed to light, the emulsion hardens onto the fabric and becomes water-resistant. So, to put your image on the screen, you want a "positive" with an opaque, black image on it (blocks light) and a transparent background that lets light get through to react with the photoemulsion.

An easy way to do this is to make a black & white image with a graphics program, or draw on white paper, then photocopy the image onto a transparency.

For this project, I'm printing up some patches and maybe t-shirts, and my images are just plain black text. I've included the .pdf files I used for my prints.

More ideas:
It's even possible to make a "grayscale" screenprint, where solid black areas on your printed image end up entirely clear on your screen, and gray areas are a pattern of tiny black dots that become tiny clear spaces on your screen. To do this, you'll still need to start with a fairly high-contrast black & white image, then convert it to bitmap. A resolution test pattern (like this classic RCA test pattern) helps with calibration and makes a neat screenprinted image by itself, too.

Comments

[nappilyevrafter]

Woah, Cory?  I heard about this site from your book.  How ironic, I (think) I'm reading an instructable also written by you.  Thanks for everything - you rock.