How do I create a grayscale halftone

[mksgrafix]

How do I create a grayscale halftone that looks like this.

With the dot screen. I created this image when I had Photoshop CS5 and can not duplicate it since upgrading to my current version.

I work with Photoshop CC version 20.0.3 on a MacBook Pro (15-inch, 2017) High Sierra 10.13.6. I have followed these directions:

https://www.shutterstock.com/blog/how-to-halftone-images-in-adobe-photoshop

But I get squares instead of dots.

Thank you, Marta

[Semaphoric]

I'm assuming you mean the second method from that site. In the "Halftone Screen" dialog, look in the Shape dropdown, and make sure it is set to "Round".

[mksgrafix]

Hi and thank you for the reply. Yes I meant the second method and I did check many times to make sure I selected the round option. As I mentioned before, I have done this with the correct results in PS CS5 but in the latest version I get squares instead of dots. Any other thoughts? I am really stumped.

Marta

[Semaphoric]

Are you getting the same sort of squares as if you had selected square dots? Also, if the gray is 50% with a 45° angle, the round dots will be a square checkerboard pattern.

[mksgrafix]

Yes, I tried both round and square with the rest of the settings the same:

Round is the top one. These are screen shots of the results. I used 150 dpi, 70 frequency, 45 angle. The original circle was 30% gray. The size difference is only because I zoomed in differently before taking the screen shot.

I have Photoshop CC updated to the latest version.

[Semaphoric · Accepted solution]

The problem is your choices of resolution and line frequency. The size of a cell that can hold one dot, either a black one or a white one next to it, is the output resolution divided by the line frequency. In your case, 150 ppi  / 70 lpi = 2.14, which get rounded down to 2. So, each dot is 4 × 4 pixels. Four of these arranged in a 2 × 2 group make one halftone cell. There are 5 black pixels in each 16 pixel halftone cell; 5 / 16 = 0.3125, which is very close to 30%.

Since your dots are only 2 × 2 pixels, they can't help but look square. You need to either raise your output resolution, or lower your screen frequency, or both.

[mksgrafix]

Yes, that did it! Thank you for your time.

[Semaphoric]

I'm glad I could help.

Usually, when I do this, I would just stick different numbers into the various fields. Explaining it to someone else made me think about just how they interact, so this helped my understanding, too.

[Semaphoric]

Semaphoric  wrote

The problem is your choices of resolution and line frequency. The size of a cell that can hold one dot, either a black one or a white one next to it, is the output resolution divided by the line frequency. In your case, 150 ppi  / 70 lpi = 2.14, which get rounded down to 2. So, each dot is 4 × 4 pixels. Four of these arranged in a 2 × 2 group make one halftone cell. There are 5 black pixels in each 16 pixel halftone cell; 5 / 16 = 0.3125, which is very close to 30%.

Since your dots are only 2 × 2 pixels, they can't help but look square. You need to either raise your output resolution, or lower your screen frequency, or both.

Since I can no longer edit the typo, each dot is 2 × 2 pixels, for a total of 4.