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Patroels
Participant
October 25, 2017
Question

From colours, over grayscale, to B/W by Colour Halftone?

  • October 25, 2017
  • 1 reply
  • 393 views

Dear users

Please help this happy amateur to move on:

I have a motive w. 7 colours that I'd like to be able to print in Black & White.

I'm guessing that some sort of rasterization is needed and have searched YouTube for videos that can help me out.

But there are two problems in all of those clips I've seen so far:

1· When they use the Pixelate/colour halftone, they've already decided on their max. radius of pixels (I do understand what 'max. radius' does).

Just as they've decided what the screen angles should be (But I don't get what that does!) and not a single word on why the've chosen their specific values.
''Just play around with the numbers'', was the closest I got.

2· When the colour halftone has been set and the image has had its appearance expanded, they move on to Image Trace.
This tool does seem to work wonders... If I knew how to use it properly! Again, the 'advice' is to ''play around with it'' which I've been doing for several weeks now.

I usually wear my hair short, so pulling what's left of them out in despair, is getting rather difficult!

I've tried having the colours I'd like in raster, represented in degrees of Black, in percentage, for my own ease.
The motive has both oblong and square/round objects, which is why I'm utilizing Gradient to achieve a lighting effect (a square gemstone reflects differently than an oblong metal bar, etc.)  I'm fairly confident in that part, but cannot move on effectively in the two points mentioned above.

The 'greyscaled colours' (in Gradient) are:

Metal/light grey (B 10-30%)

Yellow (B 20-50%)

Gold (B 30-60%)

Brown (B 40-70%)

Red (B 50-80%)

Dark Blue (B 60-90%)

Black is the actual lineart that needs 'colour-fill', so no gradient: B 100%.

White is the surface of the printing matter, so the finished result must have full opacity... Or is that translucency?

(Oh, the joys of being an amateur )

Obviously, the darker rasters will consist of larger cirkles with smaller spaces inbetween and vice versa.
But so far, I'm only getting huge 'blobs' inside the lineart, no matter what gradient in Black, I'm trying.

Either that, or the part of the image I'm working with simply disappears.
I'm no where near the effect seen in raster-printed B/W photos!

Is this making any sense?
Can anyone please help?

    This topic has been closed for replies.

    1 reply

    Monika Gause
    Community Expert
    Monika GauseCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    October 25, 2017

    Patroels  schrieb

    Dear users

    1· When they use the Pixelate/colour halftone, they've already decided on their max. radius of pixels (I do understand what 'max. radius' does).

    Just as they've decided what the screen angles should be (But I don't get what that does!) and not a single word on why the've chosen their specific values.
    ''Just play around with the numbers'', was the closest I got.

    2· When the colour halftone has been set and the image has had its appearance expanded, they move on to Image Trace.
    This tool does seem to work wonders... If I knew how to use it properly! Again, the 'advice' is to ''play around with it'' which I've been doing for several weeks now.

    I usually wear my hair short, so pulling what's left of them out in despair, is getting rather difficult!

    Without seeing any example it will be difficult to help.

    Since the values you input into each of the dialog boxes do heavily depend on your artwork (the amount of detail), the outcome you wish and the size and raster effect resolution of your file, experimenting is the only advice they can give you. Because if you use the same numbers as they do, you might be very disappointed and will ask them what to do, but they don't know that.

    1. angle means just that. 0° means the doty are arranged vertically/horizontally. Angling them will rotate that. It's important in offset printing in order to prevent Moiree

    2. What each option does is explained in the documentation.

    How to edit artwork in Illustrator using Image Trace

    Tracing them will put all of the shapes side by side. No overlapping.

    You might want to also try out the plugin phantasm. It can do vector halftone.

    P
    PatroelsAuthor
    Participant
    October 25, 2017

    Thanks for replying, Monika
    And a fast reply, at that :-)

    1. angle means just that. 0° means the doty are arranged vertically/horizontally. Angling them will rotate that. It's important in offset printing in order to prevent Moiree

    That's the part I understand, but seing as many of them demonstrate Colour Halftone by making a circle w. a radial gradient and ending up with what –to me– looks identical results, even though their screen angles are wildly different, I'm at a loss.Especially when a few of them argue that it (the screen angles in degrees) has to be like they say, I get confused.

    'Cause they do look more or less identical.

    2. What each option does is explained in the documentation.

    How to edit artwork in Illustrator using Image Trace

    Tracing them will put all of the shapes side by side. No overlapping.

    *Ahem*... Nope. Haven't seen that before (...He wrote, blushing ever so slightly).

    I'd better start diving in to that!

    I won't be marking this as 'Answered'. Not that Your answer is wrong in any way, I don't think it is, but because I don't yet understand it.
    I hope that's okay with You.

    Monika Gause
    Community Expert
    Monika GauseCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    October 25, 2017

    Patroels  wrote

    but seing as many of them demonstrate Colour Halftone by making a circle w. a radial gradient and ending up with what –to me– looks identical results, even though their screen angles are wildly different, I'm at a loss.

    I don't understand that part.

    I don't watch too many of those YT tutorials so I don't know what you're hinting at.

    Can you perhaps post some screenshots?

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