it should be carefully noted that because of this etching process the peak of the dots making up the halftone pattern are all cut off in a common plane this is an extremely important step in the instant process which allows the image to be ultimately transferred to the final support without loss of quality or image fidelity if a reversal of the original were used to expose the plate the dots would be depicted by the etched recesses as should be evident the depth of the recesses will vary and more importantly the bottom of each recess will be generally ragged and non uniform as will become apparent from the disclosure below the image finally recorded on the support material using the transfer step of the invention would be made up of a series of jagged peaks of non uniform height in which the information would either be faintly visible or totally lost the etched plate bearing the halftone dot pattern is used to generate a second transfer plate or blanket which is used to transfer the true image of the original recorded on the first etched plate 15 onto the final support material to prepare the transfer blanket a rubber like mold material 20 which.