Color Halftone Hyperzooms 😎 Music: posy.bandcamp.com/album/count... Patreon: / posy Lazy channel: @lazyposy Posy on Spotify: open.spotify.com/artist/3zkrm... Or on Apple Music: / posy
Caught all the transitions in the cockpit controls one but when you're in it for the content you can barely notice the transition. So impressed and definitely another Posy classic.
In a world of AI generated, fast-paced content, you are a breath of fresh air. From original concepts, to original (beautiful) visuals, to an original (beautiful) soundtrack - you are a shining example of the best parts of RU-vid. If I had the money I wish I could personally finance the production of these vids lol but I don't... all I have is sharing it with friends, and my personal gratitude to your creativity...
FYI, the “diffusion” dithering of the inkjet (as opposed to the halftone dithering of the offset and screen printing) actually exists for offset printing, too, where it’s known as “stochastic” dithering. It’s more difficult to do, so it’s never become widespread, but it looks gorgeous. Also, many inkjets by the early 2000s actually did use multiple droplet sizes. Epson’s piezo printheads actually produce multiple droplet sizes from the same nozzles, while Canon’s thermal printheads use separate nozzles for different droplet sizes.
I was just thinking that. I remember seeing samples of the technique in the early 90's, when it became very much possible and not a big deal since separations were being prepared digitally anyway. I think the issue that kept print houses away from using it is that understanding how to adjust the press to keep the print good doesn't work right anymore. If the dot gain is too high or the band is starved for ink, it doesn't _look_ like the way press operators have learned to recognize the effects on the halftone. Consider that the halftone system was already good enough for the purpose -- they chose the resolution based on that need, in the first place -- and they didn't see the need for the improved quality.
As a graphic designer, I always like to talk to the printers that ran the work I did. There was a local shop in town here that had a huge Heidelberg 6-color press that did amazing work. The 6 color machines were meant to be used when there was a spot color (like a specific Pantone color a company used in branding) or other inks for special effects (like the UV spot gloss you see on high end packaging), but they could also do really interesting color separations for CMYK+ printing where they had an additional grey ink, or a solid hit opaque black ink instead of the more transparent key black used in regular CMYK printing. I think at one time they had an orange ink loaded because they were printing a beach scene in a catalog and it made it more vibrant. That same guy showed us a digital press that was basically an inkjet style system but using the oil-based offset printing inks and how it would use the inkjet style dithering you're talking about instead of screens that would make halftone rosettes. They used it mainly for glossy stocks like high-end catalogs and coffee table style books, since it was a lot more expensive to run, but it did beautiful work. I want to say it was a Ricoh.
One publication that I remember has used stochastic dithering in the past (no idea about now) is National Geographic. There was also a period in the 90s where they did a lot with the spot gloss you mention, doing nifty effects like selective spot gloss over matte black.
@@UD503J I worked for a holiday company in the late 90's, creating the artwork for brochures. We ran a second black which was for all the copy so the colour elements for pictures etc could be run in bulk then shorter runs (3 a year) just printing the text so amendments could be made. Huge offset presses were used for this, bigger than my house!
Stochastic screening is widely used in offset printing today. It became possible when Creo (the company I worked for) patented a square spot computer to plate laser head. Stochastic screening uses less ink to achieve the same density. I did the experiments to prove this and wrote a paper about it more than 15 years ago. Stochastic screening avoids moiré as well. Creo was bought out by Kodak about 15 years ago and they now own the patents and produce the laser heads. Almost all of the very high quality printing is done with stochastic screening.
It’s almost 3am and I can’t sleep, but I can’t imagine a better video to keep me company. Thank you Posy for your incredible passion project of a channel.
The Moiré interference between dot screens is minimised by maximising the angle between colourants, but four colourants means those angles aren’t really large enough, so visible Moiré would still occur... so CMYK uses a sneaky trick: It only uses three angles really, for the three darkest inks - cyan, magenta and key. The lightest ink, yellow, gets the same angle as the darkest, key, but rotated by 45 degrees. This means that there is still interference between yellow and black, but the black totally overwhelms the yellow so you don’t notice. Pantone’s failed (mostly) Hexachrome process that uses six colourants uses a similar trick - with the green and orange inks sharing the screen angle of the magenta and cyan inks respectively. The trick there is simply to avoid using the shared inks at the same time - an added constraint on the colour separation process. (Hexachrome only really had an impact on the greetings card business, as it’s too costly for general colour printing and still not a wide enough gamut for packaging).
This is actually blowing my mind. Zooming out of the microscopic view, those insane dot animations at 2:49 - 3:36 and that transition at 5:00... how do you come up with this stuff?? Its crazy!"!"
I watched that 5:00 transition five times. It feels so good!! I have always been fascinated with halftone since fine art school, this video is making me happy!! Thanks Posy
I would think a mixture of microscope and regular camera shots. Align them up with some corrected colors if needed and end up with these beautiful transitions.
@@parkerlreedI’m going crazy thinking about how many of these transitions he did and how much time it must have taken him to master the technique and perform it flawlessly over and over and over
My guess is some kind of automated scan of the page using a microscope lens or film scanner, stitched together into one composite image. Then use that as the start of the shot, match moving it in After Effects to join it to the camera move done using a practical slider/arm done in person. The only thing which doesn’t work in this scenario is the pin-sharp focus, which almost implies the entire shot is rendered-out, but the jump in the clip just after the sponsor message suggests that at least some of it was practical (in addition to the magazine flip and tape deck interaction - such flexes! Perhaps it was lit very strongly and a tiny aperture was used to keep everything in focus?
Your videos are just drop dead gorgeous. Your voice is amazing. Your editing skills are second-to-none. As soon as I can I'll absolutely support you on Patreon. Thank you so much for sharing your creativity with the world 😍❤️🙏
I JUST started binging your channel, and I got the notification for an upload! So far, the macro shots transitioning to full shots is stunning... I always love the production quality with your videos, it feels like something from TV
Just wow. You make those zooms so seamless that most people probably won't realise just how technically difficult it is to pull something like that off, the amount of work required. I don't normally do Patreon but your videos are so special I will make an exception.
This is one of my old jobs and something I love so info dump follows: Black is used because patches of solid CMY use 3 times the ink, easily go out of register causing coloured halos around the edges, and make the paper too wet causing it to physically distort and throw off the register everywhere else. That interference pattern is called a Moire pattern. The inkjets are using a Stochastic halftone pattern, which is basically breaking each one of those dots into an approximate spread of really tiny dots. This can also be used on Offset Litho instead of the standard halftones but it's *way* more expensive. The resolution of the halftone screens varies depending on the desired quality of the product and the stock used to print on, higher resolution screens won't transfer onto rough newspaper, so a screen as low as 85lpi (lines per inch, the resolution of the screen grid), whereas high quality printing would require clay faced paper and might use a 200lpi screen. Analog Repro departments had fixed percentage screens (10%, 20%...) in a variety of resolutions to best fit the stock and press, different percentages of each primary (CMYK) colour could be combined to reproduce any particular colour. Some halftone dot pattern reverse at 50%, so 20% is a colour dot but 80% is a dot shaped hole in solid colour. Offset Litho Presses can keep perfect register assuming the stock is good and ink weight isn't too heavy and the printing company is paid enough to care. Reprographics, the job of creating colour seperations for print from b/w artwork is a lost art, replaced entirely by computers over the course of the 90's. Pre photoshop there were very highly paid people that knew which seperations (C,M ,Y, or K) needed some of it's dots ever so slightly shrunk (with acid), or expanded (same process but on a negative) to manually alter the final combined colour, eg the precise tone of whisky in a glass on an advert might take days of tweaking the colour, proofing it (special manual press for short run printing), showing it to the client who might return it with 'redder here', 'more golden there' and repeat until the client signed off.
Amazing! I am far from being an artist, more of an enthustiast at the very beginner level, but I've been very interested in halftones recently. It is astonishing how a dotted layout can create a whole picture.
Your videos are so full of your affection for their subjects, and watching them sweeps me up in that affection, which is a real treasure. Thanks Posy :) Also I would love to have a Countless Dots T-shirt like yours. Beautiful design!
I was just playing Portal Reloaded before watching this, but I think this video messed with my head even more! Also, whoa! Nostalgia hit me like a brick when I saw the Construx Lunar Exploration Set at 9:59. I played with that as a child sometime in the early 90s
Heck yeah! I miss Construx! I have sets that are probably 30 years old and just gave them to my 6 year old nephew to tinker with. I think they're a great toy for STEM education too.
it’s 2:27AM August 4th 2023. Today is Friday, I’ll be at my bus stop in 4 hours and at school in 5. I feel like a toddler watching a calming TV show for children while already calm
I've been fascinated with offset lithography for years now, so this video makes me extremely happy. The production quality that goes into these videos is incredible.
Yet another celebration of how we can be amazed by the things that are in fact all around us. Your videos are full of genuine delight, and they ignite a spark in me!
Amazing video as always! I'm a graphic designer from the UK and seeing the way you present halftone printing is incredible. I just wanted to add that when you spoke about the colours used in a halftone, the black colour used in printing is in fact called kobalt, which is where we get the k from CMYK printing. Also, I love the cover design for your new album, I'd kill to have it on a shirt like you showed in your video.
No, K stands for “Key” because the black separation typically (with middle to high black generation or under-colour removal) carries the majority of the detail and tonality of the image, so it is “key” to the reproduction. CMYK printing was invented in New York around 1900 and hence its initials are English. “Kobalt” is a German back-formation that makes no sense in English at all.
Awsome video as always 😃 Watched it as soon as it appeared in my feed, definitely a new favourite channel! 3:41 Would love to get that print on a shirt!
Being a Lithographic printer by trade, I never thought I would enjoy a cinematic presentation about half tone dots. But this was truly a beautiful thing and held my attention from beginning to end. Now I suddenly have a nostalgic yearning for the printing industry I left behind
The constant zoom out to the actual thing that was pictured in the image had me doing double takes a couple of times. The stereo really got me. Amazing work
When I was younger I used to stop at my Nan's house in the Summer holidays and we'd stay up late watching How it's Made and similar shows. Your narration, presentation, and video topics really take me back there. Nan passed in 2018, but I know she'd have loved your videos (if we could have conviced her to use the internet!) Thank you for making me feel close to her again 🩷
Interested in the seamless zooms. At 4:52 you can see a resolution(?) change towards the right side of the screen. Am I correct in assuming that you took several shots, near, further, and far, and arranged the layers on top of each other and zoomed out to give the illusion of a smooth zoom effect? if so, it is very well done.
I'd speculate there's at least 3 or 4 shots and the extreme close-up shot edges is blended "on top" of a near shot one (5:22) and then the closer shots are faded out for the farther shots (5:30 and 5:35).
Im beginning to suspect this channel was created to justify the purchase of a macro lens and a collection of electronic obsessions. that being said I am completely here for it. Your genuine curiousity for how things work is infectious.
Incredible video as always! The amount of work required to create these seamless zoom shots with variable lenses and lighting is astonishing! Beautiful music as well! We don’t deserve you Posy.
I LOOOOOVE this video! Between 1996 and 1999 I have done pre-press work and learned these things the hard way. Glad you're bringing this to the younger public
You have the incredible ability to make us watch a 10-minute video about a thing that we don't usually notice at all just by making the video in such quality.
Might I suggest that you make a video dedicated to minerals? Many of them look mindblowing in macro, and the symmetry type of the crystal influences the look, you might find the physics as interesting as the mechanics of LCDs or floating droplets. And there is hardly one good video dedicated to that on RU-vid, certainly not on your quality level Also, love you man, what a beautiful feat! As usual
Your videos always bring me great joy, Posy! I am enthralled with each new topic you cover. I didn’t realize how beautiful halftone dots are up close! I still can’t figure out how you seamlessly transition between macro and further away moving product shots, and you used that technique many times in this video! Beautiful music too, I’ll have to check out your music on bandcamp. Your voice + your music + your cinematography + your humor = a very interesting video ❤
9:49 What program is running? My guess would be DESQview/TopView from 1985. The lower-right window seems to be a DIR listing, partly clipped on the left edge showing that windows can overlap. It seems to be operating in text mode, not graphics mode, and the font seems to be the normal display font.
Love the macro shots in this! Your videos have such a unique style that really stands out against the standard youtube content. The structure, the images, the music--and above all, you're so genuine about what you're interested in and what you choose to focus on. It really captures my attention every time.
I’ve always been fascinated with screen tones especially CMYK ones and I always like to look at printings real close and admire the screen print which I still do and I absolutely love the way it looks
You put so much effort into making these video and it shows, the sound, the animations, finding all the things to need for your video and the overall presentation. Watching you inspires me into putting more effort in what I so Thank you.
I've been in the printing I industry my whole adult life but my first fascination with halftone dots cam from a portion of a Volkswagen billboard ad that had large halftone dots that could be seen without magnification! Great analysis and artistic portrayal of the halftone dot!
I love halftones. Probably because I'm near-sighted and loved looking at newspapers when I was a wee one. Worked a bit in preprint, aligning film for the plates, and your beautiful video shows that halftones also reduces the effects of misalignment. Much easier to spot a misalignment with full coverage printing.
Still feels like "Sendung mit der Maus" and BBC had a child that grew up independently of it's parents resulting in a unique personality. Great content and always a joy to watch and listen to
MAN I LOVE IT WHEN POSY POSTS!!! This is my favorite channel on RU-vid! PLEASE keep doing what you do! I love your uselessly useful videos! Everything and Nothing!
Yoooooooooo!!!!!! Ahhhh!!!!! I’m an artist, illustrator, and graphic designer and IMMEDIATELY upon seeing the thumbnail I knew this would pertain to me. I’ve also been learning after effects and premiere pro this last year. Been planning on making a ton of motion graphic vids with Information like this (my day job is making infographics). 😂 your edits are freaking amazing and I’m definitely gonna be watching this and breaking it apart for years!
