Creating Basic Halftones in Photoshop

Probably the most common think you ask when you first start designing for apparel is how to create halftones so that you can design with some range of gradients and shading on the ones that beg for it. Unfortunately there is no magic halftone button in Photoshop yet, but it turns out it's not that hard to do.

A heads up, this is not a very "official tutorial" just how I go about it from what I have learned. Also I use a PC, not a mac. I think you substitute Ctrl with Cmd on a mac. If you have better ways or tips n' tricks please leave a comment.

Fig 1: What do you want? Peppered dots or a more solid effect?

Firstly, if you're working in Photoshop and you want crisp halftones that go from solids to fine grain, you're going to want to work with solid black gradients to get the shape you want. I've found out that working with lighter colors then converting those lighter colors to halftones gives you a dotted effect through what you would hope to be solid. As you can see in Fig 1, set (A) was created using a light color and never reaches a full solid, while set (B) was created using a solid black and hits a solid at the bottom. Picky, yes, but if you're in halftone mode - odds are you're picky to start with.

Okay so, firstly I create all the gradient shapes I want in black to white, or black to transparent, it doesn't matter. With those gradients I usually open a new file to create the halftones with, I don't want to be screwing around with my actual design file.

In my new file, I paste my black-to-white gradient layer. We're going to convert this to Bitmap halftones, but because we went from RGB or CMYK color profiles we're going to have to stop through a greyscale profile first. So on the top menu in Photoshop I go...

Image » Mode » Greyscale

You might get a couple of window popups about flattening the image and discarding color information. You can do both.

Now we can convert to a Bitmap...

Image » Mode » Bitmap

Now you're going to get two window options. The first it's going to ask for output, if you're working at 300dpi select that, but in Method you want to select Halftone Screen. Press okay.

Now you'll get another window for your halftone options, and this is where a bit of playing around with the settings comes in before you get get the right thickness of halftone pattern. Select Round shape and I usually use a 45 degree Angle, the Frequency varies depending on what I'm looking for. Don't go too small or else it'll be unprintable anyway. Press Okay.

Now you should have a nice halftone version of your gradient. If it's not a nice version, go back and fiddle with your halftone settings until it is.

Channels: Where magic happens.

Now you have a flat black and white halftone pattern, I copy that layer, and go back to my original design file, but don't paste it as a layer - we just want the channel. Open up the Channel panel (generally associated with your layers panel). Create a new channel the same way you'd create a new layer, and paste the halftone pattern. A pattern will be a selection of everything that is white, so you'll want to invert your halftone pattern, so that the background is black, and the actual pattern is white (Ctrl + i).

Deselect everything (Ctrl + d) and then you can Ctrl + left click on your channel and it'll automatically make the selection.

Now select your RGB or CMYK channel instead of this new halftone channel. Go back to your layers, you'll have your halftone patter selection still open, so just make a new layer and select the color you want to fill and hey presto, you're in business.

Confused? Probably my terrible explanation, but try it a few times, it's not that difficult at all.

See a progression of images below for the different states and what you can expect it to look like along the way.

Good luck,.

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