Illustrator CC2019 - vector halftones effect

[cannizzom3427469]

Hi everyone,

I'm just wondering whether there is a simple quick way to create a vector halftones effects with perfectly rounded dots.

I already know of the halftones effect in Effects panel, but that generates a bitmap image which has to be expanded and then live traced.

Instead I'd like to simply have the halftones circles starting from a gradient fill or even a vector sketch or a raster image (probably bn).

I would not use any extra plugin, since I want to be able to create the dots pattern within Illustrator itself.

As a matter of fact I am using Adobe Illustrator CC2019.

Thanks in advance,

cheers

[Bobby Henderson]

I didn't mean to imply you're rooting for a "team Adobe" only outcome. But I do hear it from others. I'm often exasperated at what I feel are ignorant statements from people in the sign industry dumping on Illustrator and wishing for a Corel-only world; you can see plenty of that in industry forums like Signs 101. Some are still fuming at the subscription only situation with Adobe's software. Others just want Illustrator to have an acceptably large max art board size.

We should always be looking for newer, better ways to "skin the cat" in a more efficient and/or higher quality fashion. I'm wondering if Adobe is feeling any pressure on the iPad front related to Adobe Illustrator Draw. I have Graphic and Vectornator on my iPad Pro as an alternative to Illustrator Draw.

[cannizzom3427469]

I'm one of those not willing to install Windows on my Macs actually..

And by the way, I'm not interested in using Corel either.. that's why I've posted this request.. but thanks for all the information you''ve been sharing..

[Bobby Henderson]

Another thing I like with the Pointillizer tool in CorelDRAW: it's great for sign designers such as myself to more accurately simulate LED-based electronic variable message centers in sign illustrations. I can take a pixel-based image made exactly to the pixel layout of a LED sign and create something that gives off more of the texture of that display. It tends to look better than just plopping a really jagged looking low res pixel image onto the image area representing a LED panel.

[cannizzom3427469]

Thanks Bobby,

to share more details about the request. See.. others can achieve it or integrate their own built-it fts.

I still can't understand why that's missing for AI.

Have a nice day

[Bobby Henderson]

cannizzom3427469  wrote

Thanks Bobby,

to share more details about the request. See.. others can achieve it or integrate their own built-it fts.

I still can't understand why that's missing for AI.

Without buying a plug-in, like Phantasm from Astute Graphics, the work-around methods are really a kludge. I've gone through that before. One method I previously used was in Photoshop with its own halftone generating filter. It worked alright, but the results had to be auto-traced in some way. You could generate a selection in Photoshop and then create a Work Path from that selection. Or you could try live-tracing the results in Illustrator. Neither generated satisfactory results. The halftone effect that would be generated would contain lots of extra anchor points and lots of random irregularities with how the paths were drawn. The vector halftone effects that can be generated by the Phantasm plug-in or by the Pointillizer tool in CorelDRAW deliver very clean results.

[cannizzom3427469]

Thanks,

all these methods are the only ones  which can be taken into consideration so far..

Let's keep us posted

I'll try to give it a go in the AI UserVoice.... who knows..

[StudioPhi]

@BobbyH5280 does that mean it's not possible yet to apply a halftone or pixelation effect to an image in PS or AI that is a hexagon pattern shape instead of a circle or square?

[Bobby Henderson]

The color halftone effects in both Illustrator and Photoshop are limited to just circle shapes. Both the Phantasm filter from Astute Graphics and the Pointillizer filter in CorelDRAW allow users to use other custom shapes in the halftone effects.

The Bitmap feature in Photoshop will allow users to apply halftone screens to grayscale images in six different shapes: round, diamond, ellipse, line, square, cross. To generate something that can be live-traced cleanly you would have to generate a pretty high resolution image or graphic prior to applying the filter. It's kind of pain, but better than nothing. It's just a lot easier, faster and more precise to use the Phantasm plug-in for Illustrator.

[yndirae]

Thank you so much for this!!

[ceyhun_akgun]

In the past Macromedia FreeHand MX program was able to give this effect to TIFF images in Gray Color mode at the desired angle and point size. Illustrator does not work with the same logic, unfortunately ... You can do these works by using Live Painting and Pattern functions together.

[cannizzom3427469]

Thanks Ceyhun