If you've ever seen a close-up of an old newspaper or print advertisement, you've probably noticed that the images aren't exactly as they appear. Instead of a smooth, continuous tone, you'll find a dense and minute array of dots. This isn't quite pointillism, but a technique known as halftone.

Halftone is the art of mimicking gradual shifts in tone with discrete units of ink. In shadowy areas, the dots may be huge and clustered closely together. In brighter areas, they will be more diffuse, selectively placed to infer detail.

Achieving a halftone effect in Photoshop is quick and easy. In this explainer, we'll show you how to channel your own inner Lichtenstein.

What Is Halftone?

The history of halftone, courtesy of Getty.Edu.
Image Credit: Getty.Edu

Halftone is a photomechanical way of representing a continuous progression of values, using only one solid tone.

In print media, this is traditionally accomplished by laying down dots of ink on paper in varying sizes and positions. It's an illusion, relying primarily on optical bleeding to make the intended impression on the human eye. These dots act a bit like analog "pixels", culminating in a recognizable image.

Think about a tiny, pixelated photo. Blown up huge, you'll notice that there is some detail missing. If you zoom back out far enough, though, the picture looks more and more like itself as it gets smaller on-screen.

Binary halftone only requires one type of ink: black ink. If your halftone image is in color, you'll also be dealing with three channels of chrominance, in pixel-dot form: magenta, yellow, and cyan.

Related: How to Enlarge a Photo Without Losing Quality

How to Create a Halftone Effect in Photoshop

"Halftoning" may refer to either the conversion of an image to halftone dots or the physical halftone printing process itself. To be clear, this walkthrough refers to the former, in a digital context.

Using a Filter

The easiest way to convert an image to halftone in Photoshop is with a filter. First, fire up Photoshop and load in your image.

A picture of an apple, opened up in Photoshop.

From the Filter menu, open Pixelate, then select the Color Halftone option.

Selecting the Color Halftone filter in Photoshop.

From here, you can adjust the Radius of each halftone dot, as well as the Screen Angle of each color channel.

Adjusting the Color Halftone filter in Photoshop.

This is where you can control how prominently each color channel will be offset from the other three components.

Some examples of halftone screen angles.
Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Great. Now, your image should look like this. If it's not quite what you're going for, give it a Ctrl/Cmd + Z (to undo) and try applying the filter again with a few tweaks.

The Color Halftone effect in Photoshop.

Changing an Image’s Color Mode

Another way of applying halftone is by converting an image using color mode options. From the Image menu, navigate to Mode and select Grayscale.

Switching our Image Mode to Grayscale.

After doing so, open the Image menu again, navigate to Mode, and select the Bitmap... option.

Choosing the Bitmap option under Image Mode.

In the dialog box that follows, choose Halftone Screen... under the Method dropdown.

The Halftone Screen option under our Bitmap settings.

From here, you can adjust as you did before. Frequency will determine how big your halftone dots are at their maximum diameter. Angle will change the direction that the dots are running in.

Photoshop's Halftone Screen options.

This method is awesome because it inverts the dots, rather than just making them bigger or smaller.

Our Halftone Screen effect.

Essentially, this means that the darker parts of the image won't just consist of huge black dots that are very close together. Instead, the tables turn: your halftone transitions gradually into a solid black field of "ink", expressing tonality with holes of white "substrate" peeking through.

One note to make is that this second approach only works for binary halftone. If your desired image contains color, the filter method that we presented first will be your best bet, short of mapping out and drafting each dot manually. We wish you luck.

Related: How to Turn Your Photos Into Art With Photoshop

Get the Look: Halftone in Photoshop

Both halftone effects presented here vary significantly. There are so many ways to spin this classic, retro photo effect for your own projects. Try experimenting with each approach the next time you need to add a dose of funky, graphic interest to a layout or presentation.