Halftone dots seem too large.

[Jamous]

Hi team,

Been a while...

These sort of images have been popping up on a few of the design blogs I've been following. I really like the old school scanned sort of effect of the black and white image. When I play around with colour halftones on photoshop I can never seem to give it that sort of look and feel. The dots always seem to big at their lowest of 4px.

Does anyone have any recommendations here?

Thanks in advance, always appreciated the help on here.

 

[Tom Mann]

It's very hard to tell what exactly is the problem without seeing an actual example and knowing the halftone settings that you used, but if I had to guess, the size of your image (in pixels) is simply too small, so the halftone dots look proportionally too large. Increase the size of your image before you convert it to halftone and you will likely be fine.

If you need to, when you print it, print it at a higher dpi, or, if you are going to convert it to a jpg to post on-line, just down-rez it by the same factor, and I bet it will look a lot closer to what you see in the example you posted.

Tom M

 

[Tom Mann]

Also, as I recall, there are 3 (or more) halftone methods built in to Photoshop. Which method / tutorial (if any) did you follow?

Tom M

 

[chrisdesign]

Your image size is 2.45 MB.



My posted image is 5.5 MB, about twice as big.


Before you apply the filter you should darken your image, because the screen filter will lighten it again.


With the smallest dot size (4pixel) you'll get this image, is this more like you wanted it?

 

[Tom Mann]

What you are seekinig is not just getting the halftone dots right, but is essentially a complete simulation of an old printed page, so it also needs to be more grubby - more noise (both small and large scale), lowered contrast, an overlay of a weathered / distressed blank printed page, a bit of random error in the positions of the dots due to inaccuracies at the press, maybe a slight yellowed, aged paper look, some splotchy transfer of ink from the rollers, etc. etc.

Tom M

 

[hawkeye]

You can also make make a larger canvas and add a new layer filled with 50% above the photo. Add the halftone filter and change the blending mode, overlay or soft light works well, then transform the layer down to reduce the dot size.

 

[Tom Mann]

PS - If your overall goal is to create an image that is pretty close to the one you posted, then, in addition to details of the halftoning, you also have to grunge-ify the final image to make it look like an old newspaper or other offset-printed sheet. Here are a link that shows one guy's approach to doing this:
http://graphicdesign.stackexchange.com/questions/38328/how-to-make-scanned-newspaper-effect.

There are probably as many different different approaches to this as there are people.

Tom M

PPS - Also, a tiny bit of blurring (before downsizing) also helps convey the feeling that they are not looking at a hot-off-the-press 2015 simulation, but a newspaper or box from the 1940's or '50's.

 

[Tom Mann]

@Jamous - re my earlier comment that a full simulation of an old offset press (ie, halftone) printed image requires one to corrupt the output of PS's halftone filter, I did precisely this to the color halftone that @chrisdesign produced (...Thanks, Chris -- I hope you don't mind me using your image). I used most of the image corruption / distressing techniques that I mentioned earlier, and came up with a simulation that certainly doesn't exactly match the goal image, but is getting closer.

First, the goal image:



Next, my intentionally corrupted version of Chris' color halftone:




Jamous, I hope this gives you an idea of a possible direction to take.

Cheers,

Tom M

 

[chrisdesign]

With this composite I tried to get close to the effect of the OP's posted image.


I converted the original image to a B+W version, and applied the screen filter with this setting.
Then I made a selection of the guy and put it on a new layer.
Also a layer for the pink BG, the Rock BG and the black parts of the guy's jacket.
The pyramid is roughly done with black strokes.


click to enlarge.