jonc

i recently upgraded my iMac from 9.1 to 9.2, and all seemed to work well. however, there is a problem with Photoshop. i routinely use halftones in my work, and am having a big problem selecting a halftone pattern. no matter which pattern i select (elipse, round, line, etc.) all i get are squares.

i've tried deleting my preferences and also upgraded from 6.0 to 6.0.1, but the problem remains.

does anyone have any idea what's up, and how to rectify the problem?

thanks very much.

jon

theKeeper

Wlecome to the community jonc, enjoy your stay. ?[excited]

This is indeed an odd problem. I've never seen this before, so i'm going to guess that it's an OS update issue.

I don't use a Mac myself, but there are several here that do. One or more of them should be by shortly to lend a hand.

MsOz

Can you be more specific regarding the problem?
When you say "squares," what happens when you adjust the sliders for size and contrast? Does the halftone change at all?

Also, when you then choose "line" or "circles," what happens? Anything? How about after you move the sliders.

Also, what version of Photoshop are you running, and have you installed any upgrades available?

Can you post a screen shot? That might help.

jonc

thanks for the replies. they're greatly appreciated. i'll try grabbing some screen shots tonight and upload them for you folks to view, and at the same time will answer the questions posed.

thanks again.

jon

jonc

hi.
well , first i turn the color photo to a greyscale, then that to a bitmap. before i upgraded to os 9.2 i had sort of nice dots (they could be better but i can't find another example) as in image"bitmap 1". after the upgrade all options resulted in "square" dots (image "bitmap 2").

the only sliding i saw was in the halftone filter under sketch. but the filter only gives the apperance of a halftone with some grey, and i am looking for black and white, without grey

this is important as i am using them for silkscreening.
the "squares" happen with any of the "halftone" options i choose (round, diamond, ellipse, line, square, or cross).

any suggestions?

theKeeper

I'm almost comfortable guessing that your problem looks like a bad combination of settings. From dpi to lpi to angle, etc. Have you tried varying them at all?

Make sure your dpi is at least 300. That will leave you a little more room to tweak the lpi and angle. And not get such a 'crunchy' looking effect.

Asides from that though... here jonc, checkout this guy's free plugin for PS. He says it's a PC plugin, but since PS's file format is OS independant, it would stand the reason that the plugins it uses would also be. (although i'm fairly sure i'm wrong on that... i'm just being optimistic) [honesty]

http://www.geocities.com/murakuma/mmplugins.html

It's a halftone filter with some great setting options. One of which is that it allows you to stay in RGB mode, THEN convert to BMP (optional), without having to use PS's default halftone filter. Plus, it allows you to preview the effect before you apply it. AND... it also has an anti-aliasing option that smooths out the look, it you want. You wouldn't want that though for silk screening; because it producing grey levels. And ontop of all that, it will allow you to use any 2 colours you want to create the effect. It really is a great lil' free plugin. [righton]

MsOz

Although I appreciate plug-ins for often doing the calculations and hard work for me (as well as sometimes offering some different settings I wouldn't think of), I always like to push PS to the limit and see what it truly can't do, as it can do so many things...

For the halftone, Keeper's right about having a high res picture, for the fastest, easiest, best results...
But what if all you have is a web shot?

If you have a lot of jpg artifacts, the result will not be as clean, but nevertheless...

Desaturate your color image, go to Filter>Pixelate>Color Halftone, and set the angle for all 4 channels to 45 degrees, and set the maximum radius to 4 pixels, click ok.

MsOz

It appears the size of your image can affect the "flaw" line that appears...
Here is just a section of the image, and no "flaw." I had to draw the marquee 4-5 times though to eliminate it...Something to do with the complex math algorithms, I am sure, but something you may have to tweak to get the effect smooth.

Good luck!

Erik

Nice effect indeed, but for print you do need different angles. Offset print that is...

MsOz

I'm not up on printing, I'll admit. Once you get the effect of dots, though, why would you need to change the angle for offset printing?

If it's for silkscreening, if you get the original dot pattern in PS, can't you just print that out as a silkscreen pattern?