The daily morning journal and courier., 1904-12-10

1 grayer today is perfeeting the hdl- tone and half-tone color printing to a wonderful degree of perfection, and
 with the aid of the Ben Day machine,
 on which he pays large royalties, he IS doing rapidly remarkable work Tn DlacK I and white line engraving, some oI II quite as artistic and accurate as the handiwork of the older crafts men who
 relied upon the eye and the trained
 hand, Now the engraver is reaching
 out for something of greater utility | than the half-tone and the wonderful results of the three-color process. He 1 wants to find means of producing line
 cuts directly by photography. This
 seems impossible at the first glance,
 but he will undoubtedly reach his ob- feet along scientific lines and after
 many discouraging experiments. He
 who can get the result by fairly simple
 mechanical process will reap fortune,
 or, at least, the man who finances the
 scheme will.
 Half-tones, while accurate pictures
 of the scene, are not satisfactory re- produced at all times in newspapers, due to the likelihood of an offset, or | smudging, of the printed page by con- tact with another sheet on the rapidly
 moving perfecting rotary presses. An
 outline cut will print deeper and clear
 CT than the half-tones and 1t is not
 spoiled so easily on the printed page by offset. But the line cut cannot be so quickly made from the photograph nor | is the process of it's manufacture so wholly mechanical. It is necessary for an artist to bring out the outlines Of | the pictures and to wash away the oth- CT portions of the picture before the outlines can be photographed on zinc and etched in. The engraver wants to | produce at once with the camera either
 line-cut picture that requires no further handling by skilled artist or
 else he wants to find a means of eli minating all of the picture except the
 outlines when he photographs directly | to the zinc.
 Is such thing possible? That IS l for the investigator to find out. When the process is found it will be as easy as discovering America after Columbus
 showed how 1t could be done. Some very cleaver mechanics, skilled in the art of modern engraving, are known l to be at work on the problem. As is
 generally known, the color engraver
 can get the red lines only, the yellow | low or the blue from any color picture or object by the use of a proper screen which will yield only one of the three primary colors, carefully eliminating the other two and shading off or dark ! ening here and there to blend with the others for the reproduction of the var l ious tints. It must be admitted that nothing could. be more wonderful than
 this work of the camera, in which it so ] delicately adjusts the chemistry of the color rays upon the sentive film. It
 would seem that all things might be possible in photography and the direct l outline photograph will yet come pro- bably as a result of this knowledge of l the possibilities of elimination Like the graphic artist at the political conven- ton, with his delft touch he catches on- | ly the smile of the boss in a char acteristic attitude, emitting the details of clothing, shirt studs and watch
 charm, unless it be that these are the
 prominent and distinguishing features,
 in which event they are made to stand
 forth as salient and determining ele- ments of the drawing So the outline
 engraving, directly made, must be
 quite as wonderfully seleetive as the
 color plate giving relative values to
 outline with almost human intellin- gence.
 l This would seem to place it beyond
 the field of mechanics, but machiness
 are made today to do things with
 greater skill than human hands pos sess, and wish all the encouragement
 to be found in the results achieved so far by the camera. the experimenters
 who are now at work on this problem
 have nothing, they claim, to seriously
 discouage them. - Brooklyn Eagle.