This is fantastic! Thank you for making it and sharing your work. I also just learned about the risograph process.
Spectrolite – Mac app to make colorful risograph prints and zines more easily
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Re: Spectrolite – Mac app to make colorful risograph prints and zines more easily
#22Risographs are hard to find (in working order).
I briefly experimented with trying to load my own colored toner in an old laser printer cartridge and got nowhere.
I honestly don't remember what the failure was — may have been that the printer I was using didn't have an easy-to-access cartridge where I could just dump in new toner. Or it's possible it was a B&W laser printer and either the fuser didn't cook off the toner or somehow the toner was not statically clinging correctly to the paper.
Anyone know of any experiments like this to create your own poor-man's Risograph with a used laser printer?
I was trying to use a B&W laser printer because I knew there would be no mediation by the driver to determine "which cartridge to use". I suppose I could try to swap toner cartridges in a color printer and somehow convince the printer driver to only use the K cartridge (where perhaps I have loaded green toner — a mix of course of yellow and cyan toner that I will have prepared ahead of time).
Re: Spectrolite – Mac app to make colorful risograph prints and zines more easily
#23Super cool. I played with it for 10 minutes now.
It really wants a portrait-aspect-ratio artwork though. The first file I tried was more like "Cinemascope" and the UI was a little tight.
Maybe I need to play more, but I feel like part of the Risograph charm is that the inks you use may not match exactly how the original was separated. I would like to select inks for separation but then a different palette for composition (and a handy preview of what that might look like).
Re: Spectrolite – Mac app to make colorful risograph prints and zines more easily
#24FYI the images are very low resolution, which is a shame for a graphical application. Looks like image srcset is set to max out at 800 px. On my screen that's stretched to nearly 2000px which makes it very blurry!
Yep, first thing I noticed too!
For a graphical print application, the quality of the screenshots leads me to make conclusions on the quality of the application's graphics.
Re: Spectrolite – Mac app to make colorful risograph prints and zines more easily
#25To get a sense of how gorgeous Riso prints are, check this out: https://youtu.be/1rfwKuXIhcE?si=oQdBpkCFUs7aSaCH
Re: Spectrolite – Mac app to make colorful risograph prints and zines more easily
#26To get a sense of how gorgeous Riso prints are, check this out: https://youtu.be/1rfwKuXIhcE?si=oQdBpkCFUs7aSaCH
I'd love to, but 98% of this video is a close-up shot of a woman talking for 13 minutes and maybe 5 seconds showing a mostly blue drawing.
Re: Spectrolite – Mac app to make colorful risograph prints and zines more easily
#27Risographs are hard to find (in working order). I briefly experimented with trying to load my own colored toner in an old laser printer cartridge and got nowhere. I honestly don't remember what the failure was — may have been that the printer I was using didn't have an easy-to-access cartridge where I could just dump in new toner. Or it's possible it was a B&W laser printer and either the fuser didn't cook off the to…
> Risographs are hard to find (in working order).
I see that the company has a website that sells brand-new machines. Are they not suitable for this kind of printing?
Or do you mean that it is hard to find a "service" with a working machine?
Re: Spectrolite – Mac app to make colorful risograph prints and zines more easily
#28Re: Spectrolite – Mac app to make colorful risograph prints and zines more easily
#29Risographs are hard to find (in working order). I briefly experimented with trying to load my own colored toner in an old laser printer cartridge and got nowhere. I honestly don't remember what the failure was — may have been that the printer I was using didn't have an easy-to-access cartridge where I could just dump in new toner. Or it's possible it was a B&W laser printer and either the fuser didn't cook off the to…
> Risographs are hard to find (in working order). I see that the company has a website that sells brand-new machines. Are they not suitable for this kind of printing? Or do you mean that it is hard to find a "service" with a working machine?
TIL, they still make these printers!
Due to the price though I'm still looking for a boneheaded hack using a cheap used laser printer with user-supplied custom toner.
Re: Spectrolite – Mac app to make colorful risograph prints and zines more easily
#30For anyone interested in the process there are a bunch of places that do Risograph printing. People make all sorts of creative things with the machines.
https://www.pushpullseattle.com/risograph.html