Ink Colors used in T206

[sirraffles]

@atx840 I like the way you picked up on the buff color. I had just finished reading a book on cigar labels and had noticed the same thing. The stippling of other colors really had the potential to bring the faces to life. A stippling artist had to spend five years as an apprentice, they were among the elites in the art department.

[steve B]

Being able to do stippling by hand is a special talent.

The dot pattern on nearly all printed matter wasn't done by hand. The halftone is made by photographing the original through a filter that's basically a screen the varying ammounts of light through each hole expose the film differently and produce the dot pattern.

One of the things that I like about 1910 era lithography is that they combine halftones which were fairly advanced for the time with more traditional art style layers that don't have a dot pattern. So the T206s are essentially a brown monotone image that's been colored.

That had been pretty much abandoned by the 80's, and likely much sooner.

Modern systems are also screened much finer, and there are systems that are direct from the computer to the plate which is created while it's on the press.

Steve B

[sirraffles]

Yes, on the T206 series you are correct about the dot pattern. Most of it was not done by hand stippling but through a halftone. I could be wrong but I've looked at a fair number of the T206 cards magnified and it seems that some of the portraits had the halftone enhanced with some hand stippling. The backgrounds often seem to have some stippling too, especially in the skies. Would you agree?

If there was hand stippling plus halftones...I don't think that there were very many things printed like that. It is like a snapshot in time.

[steve B]

Originally Posted by sirraffles

Yes, on the T206 series you are correct about the dot pattern. Most of it was not done by hand stippling but through a halftone. I could be wrong but I've looked at a fair number of the T206 cards magnified and it seems that some of the portraits had the halftone enhanced with some hand stippling. The backgrounds often seem to have some stippling too, especially in the skies. Would you agree?

If there was hand stippling plus halftones...I don't think that there were very many things printed like that. It is like a snapshot in time.

Some of the backgrounds are a combination of screened and solid colors. Probably to get the color just right.

And some of the brown halftone areas do look enhanced, often with an outline to strengthen the contrast between colors like a dark uniform and a dark background. Like on Absteins shoulder at the right of the card. That one isn't stippled, so it was probably drawn onto the original art as a solid line.

Enhancing the screened pattern manually would be possible, but lots of work for a production shop. But there are still lots of aspects to how ALC worked that are hard to be sure of.

I know a guy who repaired a damaged halftone for the shop he worked for, a 300dpi image that had been cut in half by mistake with the original no longer available. He said it took about 3 days to line up and splice the two pieces and fill gaps.
I spent a nice couple days fixing plate masks that had been photographed when the camera room was dusty. They'd have redone the whole thing, but time was short and the cost would have taken too much out of the profit. I was much cheaper

Steve B

[t206hound]

I wanted to get the general consensus that "buff" (or similar) was part of the printing process. That seems to be extremely likely (if not confirmed). My rationale for asking is that I picked up the following card that I believed had missing red ink. A "buff" color does appear where the red would be in a few cases. I wanted to make sure it wasn't faded/chemical red. I believe this to be a legit missing red ink card of Gilbert, and a few board members concur.

In the scans, notice that the one with red ink does, in fact, have an under layer of buff for the "S" in St. Louis. Also look at the full scan where there is absolutely no red or buff in the belt. BTW, there's also a nice slight ghost on this card to boot.

[steve B]

Buff is probably what I was calling gray/tan. I wasn't sure if it was a part of the brown at the time. Some cards I have the brown is more grayish.

But the ones I'm seeing here and looking at more of mine make me think buff is its own color.

And buff sounds a bit nicer than tan.

Steve B

[mrvster]

Nice Score ERICK!

At first i was skeptical until you sent to hi res!

Eagle EYe Erick....c the PRO!!

Thank God your on my side

[Runscott]

Originally Posted by steve B

Being able to do stippling by hand is a special talent.

The dot pattern on nearly all printed matter wasn't done by hand. The halftone is made by photographing the original through a filter that's basically a screen the varying ammounts of light through each hole expose the film differently and produce the dot pattern.

One of the things that I like about 1910 era lithography is that they combine halftones which were fairly advanced for the time with more traditional art style layers that don't have a dot pattern. So the T206s are essentially a brown monotone image that's been colored.

That had been pretty much abandoned by the 80's, and likely much sooner.

Modern systems are also screened much finer, and there are systems that are direct from the computer to the plate which is created while it's on the press.

Steve B

Steve, it's always intrigued me that some of the T206's look almost exactly like the photograph they were taken from (especially the Horners like Wagner, but also some non-portraits such as Donlin seated), while others look like they were drawn from scratch (Bresnahan batting). Others, such as Keeler batting, look like a combination of photography and art. Very interesting stuff - thanks for sharing your expertise!