Moderate skill but lost on this effect

[Thanasus]

Greeting everyone,

I've been reading here for about 6 months and finally decided to register and post. I am not quite a guru but I am pretty good at photoshop. However, one thing that perplexes me is the best way to achieve the following effect:

http://www.starsacademy.com/sts107/common/background_content.jpg

I can see the banded gradient, with a pattern overlay, but how do the circles get smaller towards the middle. I am assuming it is via some method/filter/effect rather than manually creating all of them.

 

[Guest]

Hi Thanasus and welcome to the board

To achieve the effect;

• Fill an empty layer with the right color blue
• Add a new layer and fill it with a black & white gradient, going from the top left corner to the bottom right corner.
  Look at the screenshot of the gradient and look at the screenshot of the layers palette, in which you notice that I have a gradient going from black, to white, to black to finally end with white again.
• Go to Filter/Pixelate/Color Halftone... and use the settings that I show in my attachment.
• Change the layer's blending mode to overlay and change the opacity to 15%[/list:u]More about this technique in this thread I wrote;
  
  http://www.photoshopgurus.info/forum/viewtopic.php?t=681&highlight=pixelate
  
  I've also written about it on another board;
  
  http://talkgraphics.infopop.net/1/OpenTopic?a=tpc&s=98519178&f=760195401&m=8001947595

 

[Erik]

1/Create your blue repeating gradient and apply it to an rgb file
2/ Set to Greyscale, and tweak the levels a bit (experiment)
3/Set to Bitmap

Choose "Use halftone screen"
-Frequency low, like some 10
-Shape Round
-Angle 45?

4/ Go back to rgb over greyscale
5/ Make background a layer
6/ Add another layer and place it under the halftone screen layer
7/ Fill with your blue gradient
8/ Activate halftone screen layer and set to darken or multiply

This is the principle. You can, of course, use some GaussianBlur, or use the halftone screen as a layermask etc etc...

experiment, and have fun!

 

[wbiss]

Welcome aboard Thanasus! See, you ask a question around here and before you know it, you get the answer to what you were looking for and then some! Enjoy your stay!

 

[Thanasus]

Thank you everyone.... the color halftone is exactly what I was missing.

Thanks!