Download - Creating Halftone in Adobe Illustrator
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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
$et the *a". Radius to +-+ pi"els. !his will determine the si#e of the largest dot in the effect. o ahead and leave
the screen angles at the default setting. (it /0. !he star is now converted to a raster image. !he darkest areas of
the star have the largest dots, and the lightest areas have smaller dots. 1e are now half way there. 1e need to
convert the raster image to vector. Step 3:1ith the star still selected, go to /b%ect'&"pand Appearance in the
menu. 2ow select/b%ect'3ive !race'*ake and &"pand from the menu. !he star is now a full vector ob%ect. 4ou
can select each dot individually if you choose because theyre all vector shapes 5see step 6 in the image above7.
8ut you probably want to add some color. Step 4:
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If the star is on a white background, everything will appear to be perfect. 8ut draw a bo", fill it with color and send it
to the back by hitting ommand-$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.