posted by Liz
I've never had so many follow-up questions on a tutorial as with the one back in August on halftone dots. One commenter called Ted left a question about creating patterns and shapes with halftone dots and I want to go over each of those. So, luckily for you, here's the second tutorial in two days.
Halftone Patterns
To create warped patterns with halftone dots, here's what I recommend. While in quick mask mode, experiment with different types of gradients. Try using a radial or reflected gradient instead of the linear one to start with. Now apply a color halftone filter, changing the radius you use each time. Stay in Quick Mask mode and use at least one other filter to distort the pattern. Such as Distort>Twirl, for example. Then return to Standard Mode and fill the selection. You can make all sorts of mind-bending patterns this way. (Use a reverse gradient if you want the color to fill the outer edges instead of the middle or Inverse the selection once you've applied all the filters.)
Halftone Shapes
If you want to make halftone dots in the shape of a specific object, you can do it using Channels. Here are the steps:
1. If your object is part of a photo, make a selection around it and paste it onto its own layer using Command+J. If it's already on its own layer, go to step 2. I'm using a car.
2. Once you have your object on a separate layer, Command-click on the thumbnail in the Layers Palette to make a selection around it. Now expand that selection a little, maybe 5 to 10 px by going to Select>Modify>Expand. Don't overdo it or you'll begin to lose the shape of your object.
3. Switch over to the Channels palette and click on the Create New Channel button.
4. Fill the selection with white by making sure white is your foreground color and hitting Option+Delete. Deselect with Command+D.
5. Two filters next. First, Gaussian Blur. Mine is set at 7px, but you may want to increase that for larger files. The second filter is Pixelate>Color Halftone. Mine is at a 5px radius.
6. Command-click on the halftone thumbnail of the new alpha channel you made to create a selection around it. Then go back to the Layers palette and create a new layer under your object layer. (You can do this by making sure you're on your object layer and then Command-clicking on the Create a New Layer button.)
7. Now just pick a color to fill it with and hit Option+Delete.
Fancy it up however you want. This is a nice way to create a textured burst of color behind any object.
