Photo shop's threshold effect in Illustrator

[Fun Seeker]

Hi,

Is there any way to achieve the same type of results that Photoshop's Threshold effect produces in Illustrator? Using the trace function on an image prepared in Photoshop doesn't produce desirable results if the image is overly complex. I can't find a suitable plug-in either.

Thanks for any help you can provide.

Kind regards,

Mark

[Monika Gause]

Please post a screenshot of your artwork and of what you want to achieve.

[Fun Seeker]

Hi Monika and Tom,

Thanks for responding to my message. Here is a sample pic, all I did was apply the Threshold effect in Photoshop on an adjustment layer, nothing more. I think you´ll agree that trying to trace over something like this in Illustrator would be futile, so I was hoping to find an alternative method. Any help would be appreciated.

Kind regards,

Mark

[Monika Gause]

This is just a bitmap. Prepare it at a sufficient resolution and you can use it for printing. Why trace it at all?

[Fun Seeker]

Hi Monika,

Because I intend to use this image in conjunction with other artwork, the other artwork being halftone dots in vector format. The idea was to layer them, and then merge them using Illustrator. If I print the image as is, I won´t be able to block out the overlapping areas, forcing me to print multiple colors on top of each other. Not sure if you understand what I´m trying to say. I could do it as you suggested, but I´d prefer not to if possible.

Kind regards,

Mark

[Fun Seeker]

Hi Monika and Tom,

I intend to use the image for screen printing purposes, not sure if knowing that helps. The Threshold effect is an effect way of creating single color designs, but I´d much prefer to have the resulting image in vector format if possible.

Kind regards,

Mark

[Ton Frederiks]

You can show the Advanced options in the Image Trace panel.

Increase the Paths percentage and lower the Noise settings to get closer to what you see in Photoshop.

[Kurt Gold · Accepted solution]

Unlike Photoshop, Illustrator does not provide straightforward Threshold adjustments, but you can mimic it pretty well (assuming it has to be done in Illustrator and assuming the final result does not necessarily have to be vector artwork).

You may download and take a look at this sample .ai file:

mimicked_threshold_adjustment_in_illustrator_001.ai.zip - Google Drive

On artboard 1 I’ve put a placed Photoshop parrot that was prepared with a Threshold adjustment (Level: 128).

On artboard 2 you can see the same parrot that was prepared with a graphic style in Illustrator.

There are slight differences, but the overall appearance is almost identical.