halftone screen

Definition: Glass plate used to convert continuous-tone (fulltone) originals to halftone. * The screen is printed or etched with a fine grid of lines or dots which cast a slightly unsharp shadow over the film: variations in brightness of the original are thus translated into dots of varying sizes (i.e. as halftones) onto the film, which is then used to create the halftone printing plate. * Largely obsolete, being replaced by scanning and rasterising technology.

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