Which technique is used in silk screen printing to prepare the screen for printing?

In silk screen printing, the technique that is primarily used to prepare the screen for printing is emulsion application. This process involves coating the screen with a light-sensitive emulsion that hardens when exposed to light. When an image or design is printed onto a transparency and placed on the screen, the areas of the emulsion that are exposed to light harden, while the unexposed areas remain soft. After washing the screen, the soft emulsion is removed, creating a stencil of the chosen design on the screen. This allows ink to pass through the open areas onto the substrate being printed.

Understanding this technique is crucial for successful silk screen printing, as it directly affects the clarity and quality of the final printed image. Other methods, such as etching and stenciling, are used in different printing and artistic processes, but they do not directly correlate to the preparation of the screen in silk screen printing. Masking is typically a method of protecting certain areas from being printed during the actual printing process rather than preparing the screen itself.