Halftone Issue

[duckiecomrade]

Hi! Would someone be able to help me fix this issue? I want to have a dotted halftone pattern on the blurred circle shown in the photo but instead, this thing happens. 
Note: The version I'm using is Photoshop 2022

[Stephen_A_Marsh]

Please post a screenshot of your Layers panel.

I'm presuming you have a drop shadow layer style applied to the layer. You will need to separate the drop shadow as a separate layer and apply the halftone effect to the separate shadow layer.

[duckiecomrade]

No, it's not a drop shadow. It's a Gaussian blur.

[Stephen_A_Marsh]

OK, so the blurred pixel layer is in a separate layer, just like my example... Is the halftone effect in my animated example what you are looking for? Should the halftone be a single-plate "stipple" or a four-plate CMYK "rosette" halftone pattern?

There are multiple methods and all have different results:

• Filter > Pixelate > Color Halftone (RGB or CMYK mode)
• Filter > Filter Gallery > Sketch > Halftone Pattern (RGB mode only)
• Converting to Bitmap mode using a halftone (most realistic results but takes more work)

[duckiecomrade]

Yes, that's the halftone pattern I want. The 'Filter > Pixelate > Color Halftone' doesn't work and that's the problem I want to fix. My work is on RGB mode and CMYK mode doesn't fix as well. 

[Stephen_A_Marsh]

The halftone in my example was created from duping the shadow layer to a new doc and converting to bitmap mode at final pixel resolution/size. Then recombining the bitmap shadow doc back to the original.

[duckiecomrade]

For me, it creates a threshold-like effect.

[Stephen_A_Marsh]

You need to select the halftone conversion method with appropriate screen frequency for the document resolution and screen angle and dot shape.

https://helpx.adobe.com/au/photoshop/using/converting-color-modes.html

[D Fosse]

I think it looks like moiré from screen resampling on a zoomed out image.

@duckiecomrade Set View at 100% (ctrl+1) and check again.

[Stephen_A_Marsh]

Yes, that's the halftone pattern I want. The 'Filter > Pixelate > Color Halftone' doesn't work and that's the problem I want to fix. My work is on RGB mode and CMYK mode doesn't fix as well. 

By @duckiecomrade

I mentioned CMYK because it's "more correct" in creating a colour halftone than RGB. Even if the image is meant for RGB display, create the Color Halftone filter in CMYK and then convert back to RGB and adjust saturation if needed.

I used Bitmap mode halftone as it creates the best results, but as I mentioned it has to be created at final pixel size (100%) and as @D Fosse mentions, such effects need to be viewed at 100% size where 1 image pixel = 1 display pixel (1:1).

[Semaphoric]

An alternative approach would to use a circular selection for a mask on a Color Fill layer. Blur the mask, and then apply Color Halftone to the mask. Only the first channel is used.

[Trevor.Dennis]

There's a new halftone effect in Parametric filters, which I think gives you more control.

It's only available in the beta version though.

[Myra Ferguson]

There's also the free Comic Kit script that might help:

• https://exchange.adobe.com/apps/cc/13159/comic-kit