Is there anyway to turn off anti aliasing for the production file output?
with our fullfillment customers I am noticing that any artwork created using the online designer has anti aliasing turned on which causes headaches when printing with Kornits.
It may not be anti aliasing causing the problem but Kornit recomend turning it off.
Most of our orders come from 3rd party's running decos so I cant link them here. I can send you more details and the artworks privately if it will help.
I have noticed that certain fonts print horribly coming straight from the production files in deco. I don't use a Kornit but rather an Epson and Neoflex. Both have issues with the same fonts with two different rips. Maybe this is the issue perhaps? Epson using digital factory and Neoflex using Kotahari.
It seems that the png files contain the anti aliasing data. We upload Corel vector files with plain white letters ( converted to curves due the font ). When we downloaded the png and print it our DTG printer does the white pass then goes back and lays down some CYMK grey. It is not noticeable but it does mean the printer is doing a CYMK print layer that ties our printer up for about 50 seconds. On 300 shirts.... you get the picture. We got around this by exporting from Corel direct to a PNG without anti aliasing and no more CYMK grey. BUT it is a hassle and makes work for our production team.
John
As DecoNetwork lives and dies by the quality of its work you have to understand we do in fact care a great deal about any issue that we come across. We've actually spent hours on this already with no good results or solutions found so far. But what Ellis says is very interesting and possibly a good lead for further investigation. If you are still tuned in Ellis can you PM me the some example files / orders involved in your process because I'd to compare what you are giving to your kornit to what Deco outputs as the png.
Since I hadn't heard from you in nearly 2 months I had assumed you weren't interested.....
You also said the issue would be taken care of with the new 7.5 release but the issue remains on my print files.
Nothing is ideal there but it will get around the artifacts you are seeing. 75 will eventually be released as stable and then the whole problem will be history. Till then sit tight!
Anti-alias adds a feather to the edges of the vector images. This will cause unwanted slight halo effect around things. It will make the image look like the white underbase is not lining up with the color layer.
In otherwords, when the edges are feathered the dtg rip will add white ink on the feathered edge to try to get the feather effect. For dtg you need clean sharp lines.
This effect is good if you are printing on paper, in some programs it's called font smoothing. It makes it easier on the eye when reading. In photoshop when you type fonts, you have a choice of none, strong, sharp and so on in a drop down menu. Always choose the none option, any of the other options are font smoothing or anti-aliasing.
we understand the problem is antialias related quite well. What we haven't been able to figure is what gives you a satisfactory solution. If you turn AA off, then you can get jaggy edges., If you turn it on, you get the problems which were first reported in the thread. What Ellis has said is interesting in that the prod file is direct from corel giving a different result for him. What we want to look at is why that might be, and if works how to get a similair result. Preferably without using the corel engine as we are moving away from that tech at this stage.
The issue is very much a combination of resolution and anti-aliasing. In general anti-aliasing should be avoided. We never used it for the horrible halo effect it gave which Justin highlighted.
Below is the same "R" exported as a PNG with anti-aliasing off, and at different resolutions.
The jagged effect is obviously more prominent for the lower resolutions so our solution for DTG printing files was always:
- .PNG format
- Anti-aliasing off
- 300DPI
The lagged edges are still present, but realistically at 300DPI they are so small and consider fabric has arguable a visual resolution of around 120DPI anyway... Most fabric printing recommends 150 DPI but 300DPI reduces the amount of visual jagged edges you get.
Here is an example of the issue... for Adam et al.
Use case.
1. Create CorelDraw vector file with white text only ( note we set to 600 dpi ) which does matter even though it is a vector.
2. Upload original cdr V17 vector file.
3. Download created PNG file from DECO production
4. Open output PNG from step 3 using photoshop and zoom in on edge.
Observations
File contains anti-aliasing information in the form of varying transparency on fringe pixels.
Desired result
White pixels on edge with no transparency.
Note if PNG file is created using CorelDraw Export with no anti aliasing then the edge is clean with no fringe transparent pixels.
Conclusion
Deco is creating PNG files with anti-aliasing at some point while converting from vector to PNG.
Issue with current results - when printing DTG the RIP software translates the transparent pixels into CYMK grays and does a CYMK pass after the white underbase. The CYMK fringe is too small to see but the extra print time is not required which unnecessarily increases print cycle times and hence reduces throughput of printer - time is money.
These results are easily replicated.
John
Attachments:
The following user(s) said Thank You: brenden, Justin86