Digital BW, The Print

> Now I'm confused too.  Since I am not an expert in the "dot" area, I
> have to defer to the book, "Making Digital Negatives for Contact
> Printing" by Dan Burkholder (pg 36).  His definition of stachastic
> (Random Dot) images is:
>
> "Negatives that vary the dot "frequency" are called stochastic
> negatives. Instead of arranging the spots of ink like so many soldiers
> in formation, stochastic negatives use much smaller specks that are
> randomly arranged, much like the grain in conventional film.  By
> varying the concentration of these tiny specks, the shades of gray are
> simulated."
>
> Dan Burkholder goes on to talk about two kinds of Random dot images
> that he uses, which are (1)Diffusion dither bitmaps made in Photoshop,
> and (2)Icefields stachastic images (from a stand-alone program).

That's all fine, but they are STILL all considered a halftone technique!

> I'm only assuming that if you don't use the Diffusion dither bitmaps
> SPECIFICALLY in Photoshop you're going to get

>>>> virtually Halftone dot images

I don't know what you mean by that...but if you are referring to the cell
based halftone pattern, those are simply an ordered dither...periodic, point
based and may be either clustered or dispersed, depending on the algorithm.
That is but one methodology of halftoning.

> I do know that I have NEVER seen the term Halftone used without
> meaning LINE (or grid) Screen.

In every digital imaging book I have, as well as my experience developing
and designing digital imaging systems for 20+ years, halftone does not
necessarily denote an ordered dither method.  Halftone is a term used just
to describe the use of solid ink(s) and white space in a varying pattern to
simulate the illusion of continuous tone.  Halftone does NOT specify the
algorithm.

> I also know that you can specify
> Halftone in the Epson printer setup, but I have only ever used it to
> make print screens for photo-intaglio printmaking where I wanted the grid.

In the 3000 printer setup, you can specify any of THREE  "halftone" (that's
the title to the selection they chose to use) patterns...coarse dithering,
fine dithering and error diffusion.  Again, these are ALL different halftone
techniques.  Even Epson calls them all "halftone".