8/9/2019 Creating Halftone in Adobe Illustrator

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A Case Study for:

reate a halftone-dot effect in Adobe Illustrator

A while back I posted a link that would show you how to create an interesting halftone-dot effect in Photoshop.

Recently, a reader left a comment on the post asking if there was a way to achieve the same effect in Illustrator. Imhappy to report that there is, and Ive put together a tutorial to show you how.

Step 1:reate a shape in Illustrator that you wish to convert into the halftone-dot effect. I chose a star. !o achieve

the mi"ed-si#e dots, youll want to use a gradient, and to make it easy later, you should probably start with a simple

black color. Step 2:$elect the ob%ect and select&ffect'Pi"elate'olor (alftone) from the menu. !he color halftone

dialog bo" will open where you can enter some numbers to ad%ust the appearance of the effect

$et the *a". Radius to +-+ pi"els. !his will determine the si#e of the largest dot in the effect. o ahead and leave

the screen angles at the default setting. (it /0. !he star is now converted to a raster image. !he darkest areas of

the star have the largest dots, and the lightest areas have smaller dots. 1e are now half way there. 1e need to

convert the raster image to vector. Step 3:1ith the star still selected, go to /b%ect'&"pand Appearance in the

menu. 2ow select/b%ect'3ive !race'*ake and &"pand from the menu. !he star is now a full vector ob%ect. 4ou

can select each dot individually if you choose because theyre all vector shapes 5see step 6 in the image above7.

8ut you probably want to add some color. Step 4:

8/9/2019 Creating Halftone in Adobe Illustrator

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If the star is on a white background, everything will appear to be perfect. 8ut draw a bo", fill it with color and send it

to the back by hitting ommand-$hift-9. 4oull notice that the inside of the star remains white. If you want it to be

transparent, you have %ust a bit more work to do. $ee the image at the right for an e"ample of what Im talking

about. :se your ;irect $elect tool 5the white arrow7 to select any white are in the newly created halftone dot area.

o to$elect'$ame'ue

to a full color ob%ect for different results. $ee the image above with the same star filled with a color gradient.