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Colored Halftone Effect In Inkscape

I just got acquianted with Inkscape and the beginner in me clamored to learn how to create a colored halftone effect in inkscape. Inkscape is an open-source vector graphics editor that works like Adobe Illustrator. One notable difference between Illustrator and Inkscape is that Illustrator costs about $600 bucks while Inkscape is $0.00; in other words, free.

I found a cool tutorial about creating halftone effects in inkscape here. It describes the process of creating a black halftone effect. After learning it, I soon hankered to create a halftone effect in a color other than black. Perhaps I just didn’t search long enough, but I didn’t find any on google. So, I tweaked and experimented on what I have learned so far and found that one could make a colored halftone effect in inkscape using the following procedures (same as istarlome’s but just slightly revised):

  1. Create a 300px X 300px light gray box (no stroke)
  2. Within the light gray box, draw (a) black or black-and-white object(s) (no stroke)
  3. Draw an8px X 8px dot on the uppermost-left corner of the light gray box with, say, green (or whatever color you want for your halftone) fill (no stroke)
  4. Group the black (or black-and-white) object(s) and the light gray box together.
  5. Make sure the group is selected. Blur to +/-11.
  6. Unselect any selected objects
  7. Select the green-filled dot
  8. In the Menu, click Edit>Clone>Create Tiled Tones> click on the Trace tab
  9. In the Trace Tab window:
    • In ‘1. Pick from the drawings:’ choose ‘Color’
    • In ‘3. Apply the value to the clones’:’ choose ‘Size’
    • Select ‘Width, height:’ and input 300 x 300 px
    • Click the ‘Create’ button.
  10. Delete the green dot
  11. Delete the light gray box
  12. Voila! A green halftone effect!

The now messed up pic of Kiera below is evidence of what can happen to a good picture when I decide to do havoc with it.

Well, the halftones here are not as impressive as I want them to be. But, charge that to my amateur talent at manipulating digital graphics. Perhaps, a few more weeks of experimenting will help.

The free Inkscape application can be downloaded here: inkscape.org.

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Photo Light Box: February



I just renewed my interest in learning illustrator as I thought it would go nicely with whatever skills I already have with photoshop. The tutorial I saved on my hard drive is about making shiny marbles or balls. So, I thought I’ll just publish a photo light box feature of some of the work I did after following the tutorial. It’s really not something that would dazzle anyone but it’s cool to see the first time.

February being the month of love (well, Valentine’s day happens to fall on this month, though any month would do), here’s what I came up with using the technique discussed in the illustrator tutorial I downloaded. I created the basic shapes in Illustrator and just exported it to photoshop to apply the finish I desired.

I also dabbled a bit on how my blog’s logo would look inside a shiny ball. Uhmmm, still can’t say if it would look good.

I hope my enthusiasm for learning illustrator would hold even after this first output. I have a variety of interests but I can’t stay focused on one long enough to really make something worthwhile before the next thing gets my attention. Attention deficit? More like impatience. Illustrator just happens to have a slightly steeper learning curve than photoshop I suppose. Thus, after an hour of tinkering with it, I can only show some pathetic excuse for a digital art. But I guess the time wasted was a lot more enjoyable than the same amount of time miserably failing at coming up with an idea for something to write about for my next post. Anyway, I hope to learn enough of illustrator to be able to come up with art like collisiontheory’s. It’s when I bumped into his work sometime ago that actually inspired me to learn illustrator in the first place. And then maybe later on, I could also earn a little with this skill, the way he did with his.