Apply a Halftone Effect

dot, square or line screen · any angle and cell size · choose the ink colour

Real printing presses can't produce grey ink — they produce dots of varying size that the eye blends into grey. This reproduces that: a rotated grid of dots that grow where the image is dark. It's the newspaper, comic-book and Warhol-print look, and it's genuinely how print works.

Cell size decides everything

The cell is the spacing of the dot grid, and it's the difference between "looks like a print" and "looks like a mistake". Small cells of 3–5 px read as a fine magazine screen and preserve detail; 8–14 px is the visible comic-book dot; above 20 px the image becomes abstract pattern and only very bold shapes survive.

Because each cell samples one point of the source, the effective resolution of the output is your image divided by the cell size. A 1000 px image with 20 px cells has only 50 dots across — the equivalent of a 50-pixel image. If the result is unrecognisable, that's why: use a bigger source or smaller cells.

Angle, and why 45° is standard

Print screens are rotated so the grid doesn't align with the image or the paper edge, because an aligned grid produces distracting moiré patterns and visible rows. 45° is the traditional angle for black in single-colour work — it's the least noticeable to the eye. In four-colour process printing each ink gets its own angle (cyan 15°, magenta 75°, yellow 0°, black 45°) precisely to keep the four grids from interfering.

Line screen replaces dots with bars of varying thickness, which is the older engraving and duotone-poster look. Colour the dots samples each dot's colour from the image instead of using one ink, giving a pointillist result rather than a print simulation.

FAQ