Retro Halftone Effects in Photoshop!

hey everyone brady from texturelabs.org here in this tutorial i want to share with you guys a setup that i use for creating halftone graphics in photoshop yes there are already two halftone filters in the program but i really do prefer this setup which creates a live halftone effect with much more flexibility it's five simple layers that you can drop on any document for kind of an instant fully adjustable half tone we'll also take a look at how to customize it a bit to introduce some additional color or transparency i really like the setup i hope you guys will enjoy this one let's get started [Music] all right i'm going to start with a nice simple image here just to get things set up this image is about 2500 pixels wide or so but this setup is really flexible in terms of image size the first layer i'm going to create is a very easy one layer number one is a hue saturation adjustment layer with the saturation turned all the way down i'll call that layer desaturate and i'm actually going to right click and delete the layer mask just to keep this whole setup nice and clean moving on to layer number two this is going to be a pattern layer and i'll get that set up by opening this image that i will include a link to so this is a seamless image meaning you can tile it and it just repeats over and over and over again it's actually not a super large image it's 1920 pixels square but if i use edit define pattern and save that into my presets i'll call it grunge overlay then back in the other document i will create a pattern layer assign it that new grunge overlay pattern and i'm going to delete the mask on this one too nice and simple it's just an endlessly repeating pattern it's a big enough sample that you have to look closely to notice it repeats itself especially when what i'm going to do here is set this to overlay mode and then i just have this general grunge and i can drop this pattern on any document it'll tile to fill in any size image i'm actually working on a new section of the texture lab site for seamless patterns just to do this kind of thing this layer you'll see at a moment is going to give a little bit of natural distress to the halftone for the moment here i'm going to turn this layer off i want to show you guys how this next layer works without any kind of interference layer number three is also going to be a pattern and this one will serve a different purpose i'm going to use this very very tiny image just 50 by 50 pixels i'm going to define this one as a pattern and i'll call it half tone dots then back in the test document i'm going to create another pattern layer use the halftone dots pattern i'll call it half tone dots also delete the mask on this layer and if i zoom way in here it's basically a grid of these little radial gradients if you've watched some of the other videos i've made you probably won't be surprised that i'm going to set this layer to the hard mix blending mode and that basically combines all the subtle values of this layer and the layers underneath and then just spits out a value of black or white kind of like a threshold if you're interested i'll link to a video that goes into a little bit more detail on this concept one quick thing here i'm going to clean up some of these harsh edges by bringing the fill value of this layer down just a touch to maybe ninety percent hard mix is one of the special eight blending modes meaning fill and opacity do two different things in this case bringing down the fill just rounds off that harsh transition between black and white and it's pretty awesome how that works out to create a half tone dot pattern because this is a pattern layer you can double click on the layer icon and you can change the scale of the dots you can also rotate it and it does look pretty cool it gives you a nice asymmetry that being said i've found photoshop has a really hard time processing a rotated pattern it really really slows things down so if you want to rotate this it might be better to do that when you're done working on things so i will leave that at zero for now i do want to point out something optional here a true half tone wouldn't have any of these details that kind of break out of the shapes of the dots so if you're really going for authenticity it's just a matter of applying a little bit of a blur to the original image so maybe i'll make this a smart object to keep it live and if i give that a gaussian blur set to just two pixels it's enough to turn the whole thing into just cleaner half tone dots all right let's turn back on layer number two the grunge overlay and you can see that's kind of a subtle detail but it does a nice job of introducing just a little bit of chaos into the halftone so it's no longer absolutely perfect circles just gives it a little bit more of a vintage look next up layer number four is going to be my go-to adjustment layer for bringing in some color the gradient map adjustment layer i'll also delete that layer mask and if i click on the gradient in the properties tab this is just a very easy way to remap those black and white values and i've got a little folder full of presets that i'll post for you guys they're divided into three groups and kind of specifically designed to be used together we're going to check that out in a little bit more detail in just a minute for now i'll leave this that kind of neutral newsprint color and finally layer number five is going to be another pattern this will be an easy one i'll also link to this image i'm going to define this as a pattern and call it paper screen then i'm going to create a new pattern layer here i will select the pattern we just created rename that one and also delete the layer mask so this one is also a seamless pattern that will tile to fill in the document i'm going to set this layer to screen mode and that just gives it a little bit of a weathered paper distress all right well those are the five layers for this setup what's really cool about this is i can take all five of those layers and drag them into a group folder i'll call the folder half tone and this group becomes kind of like a halftone adjustment layer these seamless patterns will fit over any size document and you can actually drag the whole folder right out of this document and drop it not over just an image but a full design with a bunch of different layers so i've got a document here with a couple of layers and most of the stuff was done in illustrator and i just copied it over put a few elements in using photoshop and i did flatten a few things to kind of simplify it for this video but part of why i like this setup is that this image just looks so much different with and without that halftone effect and rather than creating this and kind of guessing what it would look like as a half tone when i was building this i just kept this folder on top so i can see how it's coming together with and without that treatment i can always change the scale of the dots along the way and to me that just makes it a lot easier to get a sense of how things are coming together as i'm working all right let's get some more colors in here and this is actually where i can start to use some masks specifically on this gradient map layer so maybe we want a custom color for bigfoot what i'll do is ctrl-click or command-click on the bigfoot layer icon to make a selection in the shape of that layer then i've got the gradient map layer selected if i hold the alt key or the option key and click on the create layer mask button that'll create a mask that's kind of the opposite of the active selection i'm going to make that same selection again then create a new gradient map adjustment layer since i had an active selection it automatically gave me a mask in the shape of that selection then in the gradient presets here i've got three folders with different types of gradients the single color gradients are going to keep the background paper that off-white color but change the halftone dots to be red or green or whatever it might be here the overprint gradients are going to keep the halftone dots black or kind of this off-black color but they're going to change the color of the white paper almost like another coat of ink on the page then the color themes gradients are going to change both the halftone ink and the color of the white paper let's make bigfoot black and pink and if i want to keep adding colors it just becomes a little bit of a masking game so i'm going to select the shape of this large type on top by command or control clicking on that layer icon then i'm going to add to that selection by holding the shift key shift command or control click on another layer icon then i need to subtract the shape of bigfoot himself so rather than shift i'll hold alt or option command or control click to subtract a shape from a selection that sounds so confusing when i try to call it the shortcuts for mac and windows but it's actually kind of easy to get a feel for all right so with that selection i'm going to hit delete or backspace to fill that part of the mask with black and luckily i still have an active selection i'll create one more gradient map adjustment layer and use another one of these presets to give those areas a different color then there's one more thing i like to do here with the color i'm going to shift select all three of these gradient maps and use command to control t to transform and just rotate and offset them just a little bit to create kind of that analog misregistered look so i've got the colors in place here but i can still go in and adjust the scale of the halftone dots maybe even rotate this pattern just a little bit and that helps to clean up any unwanted patterns that the repeating dots might create all right there's one more piece of the puzzle to look at which is how this halftone setup works with transparency before that if you're enjoying this video so far please do me a quick favor and hit the like button and thank you for that all right well let's say i have an image that i want a halftone effect for so i'll drag this folder into the document but what i want here is to apply the half tone to bigfoot with no background white color i just want this t-shirt to show through as the background what i'll do here is take these five layers and drag them out of the group folder then holding the alt key or the option key i'll click in between these layers and the layer i want the effect to be applied to and that creates a clipping mask meaning all these layers are kind of sandwiched onto the base layer i need all of them except the gradient map adjustment layer in this case i'm just going to delete that layer and i'll delete the empty folder too then i'm going to double click on the base layer to bring up the blending options i'm holding the option key on a mac or alt key in windows and dragging the white value down in the blend if section for this layer to make the white values transparent holding alt or option creates that nice smooth transition from opaque to transparent however that smooth transition does leave some traces of white in here so to get a really nice clean fill with color i'll take these five layers everything in the clipping mask drag them into a group folder and here on this folder i'm going to use the color overlay effect and that'll fill it with solid black or you can basically fill it with any color here and if i want it to sit a little bit more naturally on the fabric i can use the blending options on this group folder holding the alt or option key drag the white value slider down for the underlying layer to pick up some of the highlights of that t-shirt alright well that is the whole thing i will link to these pattern images and gradient presets below i want to give a very special thank you to the people who have supported the texture labs project on patreon it really is your support that has kept all this stuff completely free and i thank you always more of the stuff on the way so be sure to subscribe thanks for watching and i will see you next time you

Channel: Texturelabs

Views: 734,786

Keywords: photoshop halftone effect, photoshop halftone, photoshop halftone screen printing, photoshop halftone filter, photoshop tutorial, photoshop tutorials, graphic design, poster design, poster design in photoshop, sticker design, sticker business, typography, adobe photoshop, halftone graphics, photoshop newspaper effect, newspaper overlay, newspaper filter, newsprint effect, screen print effect, retro design photoshop, adobe, print design, apparel design, t shirt design, free

Id: 2YYs09Ok4TU

Length: 10min 53sec (653 seconds)

Published: Mon May 03 2021