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Film Printer: how to use it

A free halftone film printer for screen printers. It turns your separations into 1-bit film positives and prints them, all inside your web browser.

Updated October 2026

Open the Film Printer Download for offline use (.zip)

What it does

Film Printer takes a separation (black and gray art, one file per screen) and converts the gray areas into halftone dots at the line count, angle and dot shape you choose, then prints the result as a film positive. It does the job many shops used GSview and Ghostscript for, without installing either.

  • It runs entirely in your browser. Your art is not uploaded anywhere; the files stay on your computer.
  • There are no accounts and nothing to buy.
  • The download is the same tool for offline use: unzip it anywhere and open index.html in Chrome or Edge.

1. Export your art

  • From CorelDRAW (or Illustrator, Inkscape, Affinity or any other vector program), export each separation as a PDF. PNG, JPG, WEBP and TIF also work.
  • Black and gray mean ink. Solid black stays solid; gradients, fountain fills and other shading are turned into halftone dots.
  • PDFs are rendered at up to 600 ppi. If a PDF has several pages, pick the page you want.
  • TIF, PNG and JPG files must be flattened (no layers).

2. Open it and check the size

Drop the file onto the tool or click to open it. Check the art size: it comes from the file. A raster file with no resolution stored is treated as 300 ppi, so correct the size if it looks wrong.

3. Set the halftone

  • Line count: 55 LPI is a typical starting point and the default. See Halftones: line count, angle, dot shape for how line count relates to mesh.
  • Dot shape: elliptical is the default. Round, square and line dots are also available.
  • Output resolution: 1440 dpi suits Epson inkjets and is the default. Most laser printers print at 1200 or 600 dpi; pick the setting that matches your printer. 720 and 2880 are also listed.
  • Max dot: 95% by default, so the darkest tones keep small open spaces and shadows don’t fill in on press. Min dot is 5% by default. Both can be changed per film.
  • Angle: 22.5° by default for a single film, editable per film.

4. Choke or spread (white underbase)

The default is 0, no change. For a white underbase you can choke it so it stays hidden under the top colors. Presets: Large design 2 pt, Medium 1.5 pt, Small 1 pt. You can also type any value: negative numbers choke, positive numbers spread. More on this in Underbase, choke and trap.

5. Color art: CMYK separations

If you open color art, choose Grayscale (1 film) or CMYK process (4). CMYK makes four films with separate angles (screen printing defaults: C 22.5°, M 52.5°, Y 82.5°, K 82.5°, set off the mesh threads to avoid moiré; use 22.5° for white and spot films), all editable. A black generation slider sets how much of the dark tones go to the black film. For dark shirts, tick White underbase (dark shirts): it adds a fifth film, printed first. With Solid underbase inside design (on by default) the underbase is 100% solid everywhere inside the design’s outer outline, including white text and highlights, while the white or transparent background around it stays clear. For art that fades into the shirt, turn it off: the underbase then follows the ink coverage, halftoned where the art fades (Underbase strength makes it heavier or lighter). In CMYK mode the choke setting becomes Underbase choke: it only pulls in (or, with a + value, spreads) the outer edge of the white underbase where the design meets the shirt, never edges inside the design, and the CMYK films are never choked.

6. Check the preview

Hover over the preview to see a magnified loupe of the actual 1-bit dots. Options for registration marks, crop marks, a label strip, mirror (emulsion down) and negative are in the Film section.

7. Print the films

  • Print films opens your normal print dialog, so it works with any printer your computer can print to. Choose your film printer, set the paper to your film size, margins to none and scale to 100% (actual size).
  • PDF saves one PDF with one page per film at the exact size. For big films (for example 13 × 19 in at 1440 dpi or more), printing this PDF at actual size is the most reliable route.
  • PNG saves a 1-bit PNG per film, with the dpi stored in the file.
Good to knowHow dark the film comes out depends on your printer, its ink and driver settings, and the film. Very large films at high dpi need a lot of memory; if the tool says a film is too large, lower the output dpi or page size.

Open-source parts

Film Printer uses pdf.js (Apache-2.0), UTIF.js (MIT) and pako (MIT). Their licenses are included in the vendor folder and in the download.