Half-tone effect

[Giz]

hey !

I love cut&paste layout. enveloppe patterns, pictures, negative writings, clippart.
Sometimes there are these nice artwork, half-tone effect pictures. It is made out of a copy-machine ? do you know how to do that ?

[Young Offender Press]

The only way I know how to do it is from using Photoshop. I make sure the image is greyscale and at 300dpi and use the colour half-tone filter and adjust until you get the result you want.

[Giz]

both covers I show you were made "before" the photoshop era, at least for the cometbus one.

[Mulnix]

I think those covers were made from small half-tone printed images blown up again and again on the xerox machine. You're seeing the dots of the original printed image at, say, 2000% the original size.

[St. Joshua Norton Press]

There's a pretty good description of the pre-electronic publishing method of making halftones here

Like Mulnix said, those images were probably half-tone images made by the above method, blown up several times via copy machine.

[Giz]

by blowing up, you mean a copy from a copy from... ?

[Mulnix]

Yep, exactly. And there's a setting on Xerox copiers (or at least there used to be) where you can make the output come out with lights and darks reversed, like a negative....my guess is that's how Cometbus got that cool look.


These are things one learns working at Kinko's. Even if, in my case, it was 10 years ago...

[Giz]

that setting is on the ones I use too.

so negative and as much as contrast as I can + copy from copy = halftone effect... I will try it tomorow at the copy shop !

[Mulnix]

Not to state the obvious, but make sure your source pic is something printed in half-tone, like a newspaper clipping...or it won't work.

[Giz]

OK !

(I didn't understood that I could just show the half-tone, and not making it)

[Alex Wrekk]

If you enlarge most printed things like newspapers you will find that it is really made up of lots of dots. That's where that effect comes from. Also, I don't think Aaron just used that. He did a lot of things like moving original images on the copier glass as well as those letraset dots. They are like rub-on letters but made up of dots. I had some but used them all. Also trying running images through a copy machine twice.

[Joe Biel]

Back before photoshop and digital image editing was so standard, it was common for a coffeeshop to have a piece of plastic that was a halftone filter that you would literally place over an image to turn it into dots.

now the machine simulates it itself with the effect that is often just called "photo". if you turn it to the photo setting, it's actually halftoning your image.

then blow it up drastically (rotating its position on the glass 90 degrees each time) and you should get that effect.

but here's the most important thing: imitation is flattering but it's just imitation.

your use of this knowledge is best served to take it somewhere new, rather than copy (har har) what someone else has been doing for 25 years.

[Giz]

"le plagiat est nécessaire, le projet l'implique"
lautreamont

Joe Biel said:

Back before photoshop and digital image editing was so standard, it was common for a coffeeshop to have a piece of plastic that was a halftone filter that you would literally place over an image to turn it into dots.

now the machine simulates it itself with the effect that is often just called "photo". if you turn it to the photo setting, it's actually halftoning your image.

then blow it up drastically (rotating its position on the glass 90 degrees each time) and you should get that effect.

but here's the most important thing: imitation is flattering but it's just imitation.

your use of this knowledge is best served to take it somewhere new, rather than copy (har har) what someone else has been doing for 25 years.