There is a halftone in the original laser print!

You should be able to find Estisol *much* easier in Europe than in Canada. Acetone sux! Good luck.

@@professortruszkowski thank you

@@nicnaknoc How did it go? I am trying to find some from Switzerland

@@NYSOUN I've had no luck so far, I can't buy it without a chemical license 😅

I have a multi-year supply, which I obtained from a colleague at a university in Toronto years ago. They originally ordered it directly from the manufacturer in Belgium, I believe. (Sorry, that’s not much help to you.) Alternatives include acetone, which is very stinky and flammable. It requires a slightly different approach to making the transfer and is prone to blurring the image. Another option is Oil of Wintergreen which can be done similarly to my estisol method, but despite its minty smell, is pretty toxic. With appropriate ventilation and PPE, (and practice!) both alternatives are doable, just not ideal.

You are right! So like many other things in Printmaking, the image needs to be reversed first. In this case, I flipped the digital photo in PS before printing to the laser printer. Even if this was being done as low tech as possible (using a photocopier), most machines will have a setting to flip.

Some laser printers/copiers work better than others, but most will be ok for the process (as long as they are black&white... not colour machines) I find that higher contrast images work well. If you are using an image with tonality, you might want to put a halftone on your image either in Photoshop, or in the printer/copier setting itself, if that's possible. The biggest thing to keep in mind, and the thing my students often struggle with is this > photo transfers are cool, but they are NOT photographs! The process can't compete with photography, or even other photo-Printmaking processes in terms of sharpness or clarity. But if you approach this as a means to putting something "photographic" onto a stone, and then you carry on with the stone from there, you will probably enjoy it much more. Good luck!

I have played with all sorts of imagery and imaging output strategies. If you are wanting really clear photographic results on the stone, you actually need to use a fairly coarse halftone… ellipse dot 45-60 LPI. My experience that going higher/finer with the image IS transferable to the stone, BUT things tend to fill in. Midtones shift darker and shadows turn black (or whatever colour you’re printing). My advice to my students is to use slightly higher contrast images in the first place, and to shift their expectations from “a photo printed from a stone” to “something photographic on a stone that can then be worked/reworked/drawn into.” (Think of the transfer as an additional kind of drawing tool.)

@@professortruszkowski thank you very much for taking the time to answer me