With respect to compatibility, I have used VanDerLee's filter on versions of PS from well before CS6 to the most current "Creative Cloud" version, the only caveat being what I said before -- it only runs on 32 bit versions of PS, not 64 bit versions.
With respect to your question about how I created my little GIF animation demo, I started with my own very soft edged, contone, circular gray blur on a white background, and then applied VanDerLee's Halftone filter to it -- once with the sliders in my screen shot in one position, and a second time with the sliders in a different position. To be honest, I can't remember if I was working in grayscale or RGB for the demo, and I can't look because my computer is in the middle of a major backup at the moment.
With respect to your question, "...I assume when you say the filter is B&W, only you are talking (sic) grayscale, and not tiff / bmp...", I don't understand your terminology, so let me try to clarify in my own words: VanDerLee's filter is applied to normal, continuous tone images such as photographs. I believe that if you present it with a color image, it internally desaturates the input image, and then generates the halftone pattern that you see in the images in this thread. The output is always in the exact same mode and color space as the original image, so, if you feed it a 8 bpc sRGB file, the output is also 8 bpc RGB. Specifically, it doesn't do anything like force your document to switch from an RGB mode to a black and white bitmap mode.
Finally, with respect to your question about other plugins that I might suggest, I doubt you would like "Rasturbator". The last time I looked, its output was much too crude. OTOH, I do remember (a few years ago) running across a stochastic half-tone plugin that wasn't very expensive, but, as I said, my computer is tied u at the moment, so I can't look this up for you.
Cheers,
Tom M
