Using photography for graphic design printing

[tearcut1]

Before scanners and computer programs was producing graphic art and illustration for personal projects were quick and sinly quality prints primarily done in darkrooms?

aside of copiers I know that people used photostat machines and vertical process camera for such things but could a process camera produce quick and single prints not for mass production.? If so, do any exist still? Are there small versions of such machines for personal ownership?

Also If you know, what is the quality of the photostat compared to a scanned print or color digital copy?

[Richard M. Coda]

Photostats (of color and black & white photographs) had to be halftoned IIRC... anything halftoned is inferior to anything that is not halftoned. Line art did not have to be halftoned.

[Nathan Potter]

I remember the Photostat process as a kid in Providence RI and remember many Photostat documents. They were simply photo copies racked off on a roll of photopaper which was cut just like an Inkjet paper roll. The copies were processed identically as standard photographs. Quality was a function of lens quality and machine sophistication.
Halftoning was not involved in the documents I remember. I still have a few copies as geneological documents. You could get copies while you waited and an aged receipt indicates one copy at about 5X7 size was 2 cents in 1947!

Nate Potter, Austin TX.

[rdenney]

Nearly all photostat machines I've ever seen used high-contrast materials unsuitable for continuous-tone originals. You either lost the gray scale or you had to screen it to provide a dithering pattern. Also, most were flimsy and not particularly archival--much like thermal facsimiles.

It was quite common (at least by me) to prepare graphic art as line art and photograph it using Kodalith line film. Any camera would do, but a process camera would do it 1:1. The Kodalith negative could be used to make a contact print or enlargement onto photographic paper, or to expose a photo-sensitive lithographic plate for offset printing. Using photographic paper was easy, though if the paper was standard-contrast paper, one might have to make a contact print of the original Kodalith negative, and then a contact print of the that copy, to really reduce it down to line art.

Process color did all that times four--one line negative (photographed through the appropriate separation filter and screen) and one offset plate for each of cyan, magenta, yellow, and black inks. Four times the colors = forty times the effort and difficulty.

If there was continuous tone in the artwork, it had to be screened. I never had any success getting the line art portion of graphic artwork to come out with appropriate line-art contrast in a continuous tone photograph. And for offset printing, you'll either have ink or you won't, so screening is required.

For most line art in those days, I used Press-Type and hand-set the type. It was slow and required some skill but it was cheap for most graphic arts. Real print shops had or used a service bureau for typesetting.

Rick "who spent $2000 for his first laser printer to make that stuff easier in a home office" Denney