The Riso can print photographs beautifully in our humble opinion! See our Instagram for some examples.
SCREEN COVERED OR GRAINTOUCH
The riso automatically creates a halftone bitmap pattern (don’t add the effect in Photoshop). You can decide the dot size (lpi between: 38-200) if you choose the setting screen covered or you can simply let the Riso diffuse the dots on random. Let us know if you have a preference. We personally prefer graintouch for most things, but it can come in handy to decide to make bigger dots for instance if you have a low resolution image or simply if you like the look.
OPEN UP THE MIDTONES
In our humble opinion Riso works best with mid/high contrast photos. Try opening up the mid-tones in Photoshop. Riso prints between 10-100%, which means that when something is completely white (0%) it won't print anything and you can get what we call burn out where parts of your image is burnt out and has pixelation. You can fix this in Photoshop beforehand or we can do it for you :)
FAUX CMYK WITH RISO SPOT COLOURS
Riso ink do not come in magenta and cyan, but by using Blue, Fluorescent Pink, Yellow, and Black, you can approximate CMYK for photographs or other full-color images. You can also substitute these inks and print your photograph in the spot colours you want by making a multichannel seperation in Photoshop.
EXPORTING IN GREYSCALE
When working with a CMYK file in Photoshop: open the Channels Menu and select Split Channels. This creates new grayscale files, one for each color channel from your template. Another option, if you have prepared your color separations in layers instead of channels, you can use the File > Export > Layers to Files function to split them into individual files.
TEXT
For text try to keep text and type above 6pt if you want solid and clear lines.
For text under 12pt set it to registration black (100/100/100/100). Over 12pt. use 100% Black (0/0/0/100).
Lines should not go below 0,25pt.
*Do not make text in Photoshop (it will print pixelated). Create it instead in Illustrator or InDesign*