Color Printing Reaches Its Ultimate Resolution 140
ananyo writes "The highest possible resolution images — about 100,000 dots per inch — have been achieved, and in full-colour, with a printing method that uses tiny pillars a few tens of nanometres tall. The method could be used to print tiny watermarks or secret messages for security purposes, and to make high-density data-storage discs. Each pixel in these ultra-resolution images is made up of four nanoscale posts capped with silver and gold nanodisks. By varying the diameters of the structures (which are tens of nanometres) and the spaces between them, it's possible to control what colour of light they reflect. As a proof of principle, researchers printed a 50×50-micrometre version of the 'Lena' test image, a richly coloured portrait of a woman that is commonly used as a printing standard (abstract). Even under the best microscope, optical images have an ultimate resolution limit, and this method hits it."
Re:Still not close enough! (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Added home utility (Score:5, Interesting)
I worked for years in the DTP and pre-press market back in the 1980's and 1990's. The best hardcopy printers (not pre-press) that we had available at the time were Tektronix dye-sublimation and Firey 2000 inkjet printers. Mere 300 LPI flatbed scanners with a gamma of 4.0 were supplanted by 400 LPI analog drum scanners with a gamma of 4.8+. Color matching became critical to the conversion from RGB to CMYK for pre-press. Quality printing began with 600 LPI 4 color mask process and advanced from there in LPI and color layers. Special monitors and calibration equipment were used to age-adjust old-fashioned phosphor monitors. Reliance upon SGI computers and then Apple computers spelled the death-knell for special purpose graphics systems such as Genigraphics, and then eventually with SGI. And PostScript, WTF is that?
Today, even pre-press is a dying industry, along with most print magazines. The only segment of the industry that appears to still be thriving is the soft porn men's magazines, from which the OP's test image originated. But I can assure the /. readers that a photo from a magazine is hardly an adequate test source for scanned images let alone high resolution print, since the image has already been massaged through the RGB > CMYK process and then the screening process (color separated dots, not pixels). OTOH, original analog photographs taken under controlled studio conditions, then printed in a computer-controlled darkroom is/was the standard. This printer may, or may not, be as good as advertised but the testing paradigm is highly dubious. Swapping analog film lens flare for digital moire patterns is not, IMHO, an advancement in print technology. And Kodak, WTF is that? No wonder that quality print industry has departed the USA, now done in Germany and to a lesser degree Japan.
Kids these days just don't know diddley squat ... now, get the heck off my lawn !!
Re:Still not close enough! (Score:5, Interesting)
See the discussion on whether or not sexual harassment is ingrained in hacker culture...
Really? How is this indicative of sexual harassment? "Ohmygod! It's part of a picture taken from Playboy!" Never mind that the test image is just a picture of her face. Or the fact that women who pose for playboy and similar magazines do so by choice and get paid to do so.
Comments like yours are why so many people immediately backlash whenever sexual harassment is discussed. The article you are referring to talks about women being groped at the crotch in the middle of a conference. That's a legitimate concern. It's freaking assault. However, when I see the words "sexual harassment", I do have to go and read the details before I can determine whether it's something legitimate or someone who decided that, for example, using Lenna as a test picture is indicative of a sexism problem in hacker culture. I bet lots of the comments in the discussion you are referring to are from people who didn't read the article, and assume it's really about the bullshit type of sexual harassment.