Expert: LizaL - 8/28/2006

Question
Hello, and thank you. I have a question  that has to do with halftone creation. I have seen in design a technique used all over where designers similate the look of a 1 color halftone pattern. Typically the pattern goes from larger dots to smaller dots. I have tried greating a selection of color and going filter>pixilate>halftone, and playing with every possible combination of numbers on a one channel setting, but it just comes out as a big lump of color with tiny pin hole sized dots. Can you help me? Thank you sooo much.

Answer
Hi Matthew,

I'm pretty sure I know the technique you're talking about; I never use it, but I did some research and found you some tutorials.

I think the built-in Halftone filter in Photoshop is mainly used for things like interesting backgrounds, and I've also seen it used for edges and borders of photos. But check out a couple of these tutorials and see if they help. If not, post back and we'll try it again.

1. It looks like here they've turned their image into a grayscale bitmap, then used the halftone filter -- but it turned out not like the large-to-small dot pattern you describe, but a uniform look that you might see in a real halftone:
http://www.pstut.com/tutorial-image-halftone-effect.html

2. This tutorial looks more in line with an artistic look for halftoning:
http://www.photoshopsupport.com/tutorials/cb/halftone.html

3. Again, they combined halftone screening with some other effects, and this turned out pretty cool -- maybe what you're looking for:
http://www.photoshoplab.com/halftone-mania.html

Anyway, take a look at these and like I say, if they're not what you're trying to do, let me know and we'll try something else.

Lisa