Could not complete the Color Halftone command because AppleTalk is not connected.

[matt.cortright@gmail.com]

Hello All, 

Today I experienced a strange error:  

"Could not complete the Color Halftone command because AppleTalk is not connected."

Has anyone experienced this?  My working theory is that it's because my image file is too large.

Thanks!

Jeremy

[Warren Heaton]

AppleTalk was discontinued in 2009.  Which version of Photoshop are you running and whcih version of macOS.  

For AppleTalk to work, you would have to be running macOS 10.6 or older.

[matt.cortright@gmail.com]

Hi Warren,

Thanks for the reply!

I'm running Photoshop 21.0.1 and macOS 10.15.1.

It turns out there there does seem to be a size threshold factoring in to this.  I got the error when using an image 28,800 x 18,000, but at 24,000 x 15,000, it worked.  However, it would be great if it is possible to work at the larger dimensions.

[Kevin Stohlmeyer]

That is a massive file size. What is the end point for this?

Normally when working on large format pieces you work at scale not actual size.

[matt.cortright@gmail.com]

I create a workpath from the halftone raster that I export to Illustrator and send to a vinyl cutter.  If I can work at higher resolutions, I get a smoother workpath.

Ultimately, its for making paintings, so I'm probably not the most logical user / use-case.

[JULIAN280884938h1g]

Hi. I was facing the exact same problem. I solved it by converting the file to CMYK and then splitting the channels, so that you have 4 greyscale files, one for each of the colors. Then each of those files needs to be converted to Bitmap. In that process you can select resolution and halftone screen and the type of dot and its angle. Once you have done this you can reassemble the image using each color file as a layer a new file. You need to convert each one to a color and play with transparency, but it does work. However you should check with the person outputting the vinyl as the split chanel bitmap files may be much easier for them to work with to begin with.

[David Cardillo, PRH]

Except that gets rid of the purpose of simulating a halftone dot, as each color channel has its own angle.

If you do them all as gray halftones, you're going to get exactly the same dot angle for all the channels.

[diegor9378172]

I also received this "Appletalk" error. Cropping the image addressed the issue.

[David Cardillo, PRH]

I'm using the 2025 version of Photoshop (26.4.1) on a Mac running Sonoma (14.7.3) and it's 5 years after this initial post and this "AppleTalk" error still exists.

And yes, as noted, it appears to be related to the size of the file. Smaller files do not experience this issue.

2 issues:

1) we need this to run on larger files because that's the size of the files we need it to run on (to the suggestion that it was unnecessary); and

2) how is a filter (that may be limited by the amount of data it's meant to run on) generating an error with anything related to AppleTalk, which no one has used in more than a decade, when it's not network-related?