Screentones or Grey fill

[alarnia]

So the comic I'm working on is BW. I hope to one day print it. But I've recently been wondering what are the practical applications of screentoning with today's printing technology.

Like I know that the reason why screentones exist is it allowed an artist to utilize a full range of tones without increasing the cost of printing. But dont modern printers automatically use dots to create lighter tones? forgive me if I'm wrong ,I don't really have much experience with printing. I'm not even sure if an independent artist would have access to cheap printing used in the manga industry, so that kind of defeats the point.

I'm basically wondering if for future pages I should switch to using screentones instead of flat greys.

[revisionstudios]

I actually started with screentones, and let me tell you, they create more headaches than they solve in today's printing. They're real finicky and have to be at a certain resolution to not create moire (the weird checkerboard patterns that pop up with screentones when they print wrong). Even digitally, resizing them for web makes the tones look funky half the time.

I got 80 pages into my comic before saying screw it and replacing everything with flat grays and normal gradients. I still use some texture-type tones that aren't dot based (or I went in and blurred the ones that were), but by and large, using flats has made printing so much easier for me.

I was worried about replacing them at first because I liked the texture it put on the paper and I thought it made it feel more like a "real manga", but I found that the texture look honestly comes more from the paper itself than the screentone. It looks just fine without it, if not better.

[alarnia]

Your story lines up pretty well with how screentones have worked for me in the past. It seems they're not worth the hassle. Thanks for the advice!

[LordVincent]

I use screentones at a very high dot frequency (highest possible in csp) and then when i am done i resize the image to a larger one, rasterize them, and then downsize back to the correct size. This helps avoid the moire effect. Main reason i do that tho is I just enjoy working with screentones in csp. Since I have a long time habit of doing it, it's just easier for me. That, and the slight texture it provides is something I like.

I think LOOMcomics/ LOOMinate did a tutorial on preventing the moire effect with screentones. I haven't actually read it but it might be interesting to look into for people looking to save their older pages.

[bsienk90]

I played around with screen tones a few times but I found it annoying and to slow for the pace of what I was creating. I also think it could get weird when printing. I find I have more freedom with doing gray scale but maybe that's just me. I don't like to have to mess around with resizing and that jazz because I build my comic at 300DPI but resize it for tapastic.

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Confessions Comic

[JuanTheBone]

Had the same headaches dealing with screen tones, I have to wonder if Japanese digital artists have all this figured out to a science,

[revisionstudios]

I think most mangaka still work traditionally with traditional screentones, so it's probably not as convoluted of a process for them!