Using the Halftone Effect in Adobe Illustrator

In this tutorial I will be demonstrating how to use the Halftone Effect in Adobe Illustrator

Finished Image:
http://www.mediafire.com/view/?t4knld...

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Image Links:

Example Image 1
http://www.mediafire.com/view/?r8ctfu...

Example Image 2
http://www.mediafire.com/view/?630ofo...

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Wikipedia Link

Halftone:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halftone


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Video Link:

Create Roy Lichtenstein Style Pop Art - Colouring
[Photoshop CS5]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydrvZH...

Enjoy

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Closed Caption:

hello and welcome to this video tutorial
brought to you by Institute's . com
in this tutorial we are going to use the
halftone effect in Adobe Illustrator the
halftone effect can also be created in
Adobe Photoshop which I have covered in
a previous video link in the description
but today we are going to look at how to
use the halftone effect in Illustrator
and as an exercise to demonstrate the
tool we are going to be creating this
piece of artwork here on the right and
we're going to create this piece of
artwork from the immature to the left
so what we have here let's quickly zoom
in so we have our half tone effect
applied to the face and we have a series
of the colored circles here just to add
to the static and i will be discussing
exactly how to create this effect from a
bitmap image now before I go straight
into how to use the afternoon effect i
want to quickly discuss what exactly the
halftone effect is for those of you that
are not familiar with it
i am going to talk for a couple of
minutes on this so if you wish to skip
ahead and skip this overview and go
straight to how to use the tool
go ahead and skip on the time now right
so what is the halftone effect well half
tone is the repro graphic technique that
simulates continuous tone imagery
through the use of . varying either in
size and shape or in spacing
let's take a look at a couple of
examples
I have you to look at let's jump over
into Photoshop
if you can't see these images that well
on screen
well you can download them all the links
in the description so the halftone works
by creating an illusion of a grayscale
image but in fact only use one color
this first example has been prepared in
Photoshop earlier and this is the effect
you can achieve in photoshop you can see
to the left the image appears to have
various shades of grey
but if we look closely at the blown area
to the right we can see that this is the
composition of dots that create the
image the use of white space and the
distance of the dots make it look like
the image consists of various shades of
grey
so rather clever and you might recognize
the effect this is used a lot in
newspapers
now I have another example here it's
just click on the next image again the
blown-up area to the right show in more
detail of the Hawthorne effect
this is a photo of something I saw out
and about in an advertisement
it caught my eye because i was instantly
aware that this effect could be created
in Adobe Illustrator so i thought i
would share this with you and create a
video on how to go about creating
something like this
so how are we going to create this
effect in Adobe Illustrator
okay well for this you're going to need
a few panels to help you
you're going to need your layers you're
going to need your appearance
you will need the swatches panel the
gradient panel and the transparency
panel if you don't see these you can
just simply come up to window and drop
on the menu and check them there
okay i'm going to do a quick
demonstration to introduce the
principles of the Hawthorne effect
before I apply it to the photo image
just so we understand it
so I'm going to start by creating a new
document and press command + short i'm
just going to make it really simple
let's just go with a a full-size canvas
it's not really that important right now
just click ok and i'm just going to zoom
in slightly and I'm going to start by
creating a ellipse
I simple ellipse is going to click and
drag but i'm going to press shift on the
keyboard and by pressing shift i'll be
able to create a nice and nice solid
scale circle there and if i press v on
the keyboard
that will bring up my selection tool and
enable meets who drag it around
ok
so remember we brought up our gradient
panel on now with the circle selected
i'm just going to come over to my grade
in panel and just click in the gradient
effect and by doing so we can see we
have a nice gradient going from the
right to left
black to white but I don't want the
stroke
I want to get rid of that so I'm going
to come over to my menu
come down to the bottom and i'm going to
select my foreground my foreground car
and just select transparent from the
color father
ok let's get into that now I have the
gradient going from right to left but I
want this to go from the middle out
so with the object selected come over to
my gradient panel
I'm just going to select this menu bar
from the top right and click radial so
now we have it working just as we like
but I want to change a round
I want the black to be in the middle and
the White to be on the outside
so again it's come to our gradient panel
we can see here we have our two colors
just to make it quick i'm just going to
grab my black slide to the left and
scrap my white and slide it over as a
quick fix and here we have our gradient
lips
so why am I doing this well i'm using
this is an example because i want to
create an object that has an obvious
gradient from black to white and you'll
see what I mean just in a second
ok so now it's time to apply the effect
with the object selected I'm going to
come to affect scroll down to pixelate
and select color halftone and when you
do this you will have a menu that comes
up and we'll be able to change things
such as maximum radius and the screen
angle in degrees channel 124 etc we
don't have to worry about that for now
we are just going to go with our maximum
radius as eight and click ok and there
you see the halftone effect has been
applied
now i'm going to quickly duplicate this
image
show you another example by pressing alt
and holding alt on the keyboard
if I click the object and drag it to the
right I'll be able to quickly
duplicate the object I'm just going to
move this into the center so we can see
little bit more clearly
so we have two objects you I'm just
going to click on my new object and come
across to my appearance panel and we can
see that we have the effect here ready
to edit
I click on this we can change the
maximum radius
- about let's go 12 this time i click ok
and we can see that changing the maximum
radius of the dots we will have a
different effect
now i'm going to duplicate this again
because i want to show you another
effect or another feature of this
so again pressing alt clicking on the
object and dragging to the right we can
duplicate that image just drag this over
a little bit but this time with the
object selected I'm going to come again
to my halftone let's see where we had
our screen angles where we could change
those going to come to channel 4 and
just change this to 90 and click OK and
now we can see that we have the same
effect but the degrees or the angle in
which the circles are spanning out has
changed so this just come back into
Photoshop and you remember that example
I showed you on
well it seems to me that they might have
also use this effect can come back at
the illustrator we can see that they
must have used a 90-degree effect on
their halftone so you can see we have
created two three very different
halftone effects for a single gradient
black and white object
now what if we had a black and white
photo and use the halftone effect on
that
well that's exactly what we are going to
do next
so I'm going to come back to my original
document and we're going to create this
half tone effect
from this photo here ok so the next step
is all about preparation we are going to
make this image into black and white to
do this I'm going to need to use
photoshop so i'm going to click the
image i'm going to press command C to
copy and let's come back into Photoshop
and i'm going to correct myself in you
document by pressing command and now i'm
going to select international paper and
for this I'm going to create a rather
large image
the bigger the image the better your
effect so i'm going to create a a 3
image canvas size and i'm going to just
make the resolution hundred and fifty
i'm going to press command V and just
going to paste it into a smart object
that's ok for now and that is looking
just fine and press enter and now i'm
going to come to image mode and gray
scale and just going to rasterize that
that's fine and I can flatten the object
doesn't matter
it's okay right now I need to create
more contrast between the shades of grey
white and black
so I'm going to use the levels tool in
photoshop i'm just going to zoom in a
little bit so we can see what's going on
I'm going to come to image adjustments
and levels and with this menu bar you
will see we have three and properties we
can talk with here so I'm just going to
move these around a little
bring this one on the far left up to
increase my black and let's create a bit
more contrast there and you can pretty
much toggle this until you gets to the
fact you are happy with just keep doing
this round I'm going to try i'm going to
go for this
ok
now the magic and the interesting thing
about this is that depending on your
contrast you will get a various
different halftone effect so it's going
to take a little bit of playing around
with but i'm just going to go with this
so with that done I'm going to press
command a to select all and press
command C to copy and I'm going to come
back into illustrator and i'm going to
create a new document command and and we
need to make a a 3 document just the
same
we're going to make sure it's portrait
and click ok and again command V to
paste and there is there is our image
and we are ready to apply the Hawthorne
effect so make sure you have your image
selected we're gonna come up to affect
come down to pixelate come across to
color halftone and click once again we
have our menu here and i'm going to go
for the maximum radius of 12 and click
OK and boom there is so let's zoom in
and have a look at that
it's looking quite interesting and if we
make sure the object is selected and we
come over to a halftone we can toggle
the maximum radius
let's try this time let's take 20 this
time and we can see that we we achieve
various different results
so let's go back to 12 because I quite
like that one
you could kind of make up the the face
still but still got that really
interesting
half time back there and that
is it really that is how you use the
halftone effect in Adobe Illustrator
I'm just going to go quickly off topic
and show you something else because you
might be wondering i have this half tone
effect image and it looks really nice in
black and white but what if i want
whatever is black to be say red or
yellow if i want to create another add
some color into it
well let me quickly show you how so I'm
just going to scroll over here a second
by pressing V i can select my object I'm
going to duplicate this quickly by
pressing alt with the click and drag to
the left and go to duplicate this object
now i need to rasterize this image first
because i'm going to use the live trace
so I'm going to put the object selected
want to come up to object
come down to a raster eyes and just
click OK
that's going to last us a quickly then
i'm going to use the live trace tool you
can find the light rays tool up in the
top menu here here is I'm going to click
that once and just click ok let's go to
process that for me
and there you go now first of all the
ones with the object selected i'm just
going to come to the minimum area and
push that down to 0 that will make it as
close to the original object as possible
and once we've done that I'm going to
click expand and now you see we it is
created that into a vector object
so now i'm going to right click and and
group and group those and i'm going to
come up to my menu and select the magic
wand tool and just click on the white
area and press Delete i'm going to
present V and i can select my black
areas
zoom out slightly and it's going to
select all the black and if I chain come
over to my menu scroll down you can see
I can change my black color my fill
color and let's change that to purple or
pink
click off and you can see what happened
there could see that now we can change
all the colors and do all sorts of
interesting things example I might want
to subtle act all of this
let's go back to the pink and let's say
we give a stroke color
let's try yellow you can see you can get
some really funky results
look at that isn't that cool I'm going
to come back to my original document
and you can see here we've got slightly
different effect there that would have
been because i had a different level of
contrast in my original black and white
image but anyway you can see I've got
some colored circles here and you might
be wondering how i did this so I'm just
going to show you how I'm going to come
back into my document here and just come
back to my black and white image till
you walk into a can get rid of that for
now
don't need that anymore let's come in
so now all we could do it's really
simple
we're going to come to our menu and grab
the ellipse tool and we're just going to
draw an ellipse pressing shift and
holding shift to get a nice solid circle
we've got an ellipse there I'm just
going to duplicate there's a whole bunch
of times by pressing alt on the keyboard
I can just move these around and I click
on each object I can change the scale of
them and just move them around until I
have something that looks like this
now i just spent the last five minutes
duplicating all my ellipses and just
position in them and resizing them into
something I'm happy with
ok but now I've got all these lips is
it's just a simple case of wandering
around and just changing the colors as I
see fit
make sure that you have your foreground
color selected otherwise you might end
up changing the stroke like I just did
that
so with my main color selected i'm just
going to go around and change some
various colors and want to do this
again until I have something that looks
like this
so with all the colors now changed
i'm going to select them all and the
change they multiply blending mode to do
that i'm going to just come off and I
could select them one by one button is
going to select and drag over all of
them but doing that you've also selected
your woman face in the background so I'm
just going to press and hold shift and
click back to the selected so now I only
have the ellipsis selected
okay with all of them selected I'm going
to come down to my transparency panel
you'll see there's a little option here
on the top left
i'm going to select down and change my
blending mode to multiply and as soon as
I do that it will show you all the black
underneath and also you'll get these
really interesting color or delays on
the circles -
so there you have it that is how we use
the halftone effect in Adobe Illustrator
well i hope you enjoyed this video
tutorial and I hope it inspires you to
find ways to use this effect in your
digital artwork
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