Recoloring a halftone pattern in Illustrator

Hello, I have a question regarding changing the color of a halftone pattern created in Illustrator. Here is what I do step by step: 1) fill the expanded text with a black and white gradient 2) apply Effects>Pixelate>Color Halftone 3) expand the halftone pattern 4) use Image Trace on the halftone (with "Ignore White" selected) 5) expand the vectorized halftone pattern. So far, so good, but when I select the halftone pattern and try to change its color the whole block around the halftone gets recolored (not the halftone pattern itself). Here is a picture:
I have been trying to figure out what is wrong for a while, but can't seem to find the answer. Please, help!

More items are being selected than needed. There is an often overlooked tool that can help you.
Double click on the magic wand tool to change the settings, (you can turn on stroke color also so less times are elected) then click on one of the black filled circles with the magic wand to select black filled paths only.

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Does anyone know how to do this?

James Talmadge has an impressive Script that does this, albeit in Adobe Illustrator, named »Faux Halftone«.
See the first entry:
http://www.adobeforums.com/webx/.3c05cfab/0
Its application is somewhat time-consuming and it provides only semi-automation, but I consider it remarkable non the less.
Plus being in Illustrator one can »randomize« the resulting instances of Symbols by globally applying Effect Distort & Transform Transform, for example enter an Angle and set to Random, if one wishes.

How do I create these mesh/polka dot patterns in Illustrator? (pictures inside)

I am creating templates and need to know how to do this mesh/polka dot type pattern. It seems extremely simple, but I can't seem to figure out how to pull it off in Illustrator...
Any assistance would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
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That looks like they simply used the halftone effect from the Effects menu. Effect>Sketch>Halftone Pattern
it comes out black and white so they may have use it as an opacity mask/ You need a filled path to get it to work properly and it shoulshave some form of gradient as the fill to be percise.
If you want dots to be completely round and vector which is a false halfone effect you make two blends large dots and small dots
You expand the blends
Then make a blend of the expanded art Read about making blends and blend options
Here I left it filled with blue and made an opacity mask read about opacity masks
Here i filled the blends with black and made an opacity mask

How print high rez halftone pattern

Hello,
I'm looking for a way to print at around 200 lpi with a laser printer, but I don't know which one.
I've bought a Laserjet Pro 200 n251mw but it doesn't seem to be able to print in halftone even with the PS emulation.
What printer (sub 500$) could help me achieve this kind of resolution ? I'd like to be able to reproduce the distinctive rosette pattern on one of my collectible playing card.
I've looked everywhere on google, but most of the doc about halftone is referring to low lpi work like T-Shirts.
The fact is that I can produce the desired halftone pattern I want in Illustrator, I just can't seem to find a way to print it.
I've read about Xerox printers on this forum that are maybe able to do it, but I don't know.
Is a 600 dpi laser printer enough or do I need more ?
Here's a sample of the halftone I want to reproduce, the canvas is approximately ¾ of an inch.
Sorry if its not clear, english is not my first language.
Thank you for any help
Cheers

Said another way:
Halftone dots vary in size to suggest grays. You desire a 200 LPI halftone screen ruling. 1/200th inch, center to center.
But your printer only prints dots of a single size. Typical laser printers print 600 printer spots per inch. 1/600th inch, center to center.
Halftone dots are built up from printer spots.
Is a 600 dpi laser printer enough...?
Not even close.
At a halftone ruling of 200 LPI, a 600 SPI printer would have a grid of only 9 (3x3) printer spots out of which to build each halftone dot. So it could only print nine different sizes of halftone dots. In other words, it could only simulate 10 different gray tones--9 levels of gray, plus one for white. For what is considered normal "full range" reproduction of your image, you need to be able to print 256 levels of gray.
So even if your print driver would accept a 200 LPI setting, your print would be horribly posterized.
And that's not all:
I'd like to be able to reproduce the distinctive rosette pattern on one of my collectible playing card.
The printer spots of laser printers are little fuzzy-edged globs of toner powder attracted to the printing drum by static electricity. They are not the comparitively far more sharp-edged shapes that a laser can burn into a photo-sensitive emulsion on a plate or on film. You're not going to get sharply-shaped halftone dots from from a laser printer.
What printer (sub 500$) could help me achieve this kind of resolution ?
Not gonna happen. Not even in the same state, let alone the same ballpark. Fact is, laser printers are very low resolution devices.
JET

Patterns in Illustrator

Having some trouble here and not sure if it's just the program showing where things will be placed, or if it'll be a print problem. Everytime i make a pattern in Illustrator using the Pattern tool, if it's large enough it'll show these faint little red crosshairs on some of the images. If I copy and paste these into Photoshop (for shrinking and web size upload reasons) it's still there. If I do go ahead and decide to print, will these same crosshairs show?

Export your bitmaps from Illustrator.
Try and deactivate image smoothing (anti-aliasing) in the preferences. If the lines are gone, then there's a good chance that they won't print. It depends on the print process though.

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HI all,
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First, create the pattern in Illustrator and save it as a pattern swatch. Apply the pattern to a certain size squares to your liking, expand it, then flatten the transparency copy and paste from Illustrator to Photoshop as a path/smart object.
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When I select a layer that has an image (I am going along with a tutorial on the Kelby Training site) and I am using all the same settings as they are in the video, when i get to the Filter Gallery > Sketch > Halftone pattern the view goes all white. Nothing. I can shoose others and they work but I do notice that many do not. What is going on here?
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Both of your color chips in your tool box are set to white. Press D to set them to default black and white.

How to make a pattern in illustrator from a placed image ?

how to make a pattern in illustrator from a placed image ?

Just embed the image and make a swatch of it.

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Cheers,
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The Filter>Sketch>Halftone Pattern seems consistent in getting the square pattern, but very inconsistent in getting circles, as you mentioned.
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http://www.idrawdigital.com/2010/03/download-screentones/

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Hi All
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See images:
This is how it looks.
You will see that on the shoulder of the t-shirt, the pattern is kinda trasparent - the bottom layer is visible-I don't want it to be.
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Maybe this video can help you
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does anybody know if there exist any plug in or something to make halftone paths or patterns in different shapes than just the existing ones dots, circle and line. i want to have some other interesting shapes to make graphics like at banknotes and stamps!

Photoshop can make harftone paths in different shapes.There is an option called custum pattern in photoshop which can convert it to Bitmap defining a pattern beforehand.But in case of Bitmap you get the option of dot/line but can't chose any custom shape.So the picture of harftone path is still not clear ,may be some one can help us.
Martin Fowl
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Script to select patterns in Illustrator Document

Kindly we need a script that select all pattern objects in the active document in illustrator.

there you have an example.
Did not tested, but this should do the job for you.
Don't pay attention to adobe staff advices. They know nothing.
#target illustrator
var doc = activeDocument;
var items = doc.pathItems;
var fill = stroke = null;
for (var i=0; i < items.length; i++) {
    fill = items[i].fillColor;
    stroke = items[i].strokeColor;
    if (fill == "[PatternColor]") items[i].selected = true;
    if (stroke == "[PatternColor]") items[i].selected = true;

Best way to Drape patterns in Illustrator

Hello,
I am working with some patterns, and I am trying to get them to follow the contour of my objects. For example, if I had a sock and I want my stitch pattern to follow the sock where it curves around a bend, and have the strokes stretch, when the sock get wider. I have tried playing with envelope options and I have had some success by making a large square with my pattern in it, rasterizing the pattern filled square and placing my sock on top and doing-make with top obkect from the envelope options, but that didn't really change the direction for the stitches as much as I would have liked. It did scale them based on the width of the area, so that's something, but I feel there is a better way to do this...where I would have more control.
Does anyone else out there do this kind of work and have any suggestions or tutorials I could follow?
thanks
babs

Here's the link to the discussion and the PDF
http://forums.adobe.com/message/3806065

How do I flatten a background pattern in Illustrator CC 2014?

A client has sent me through some artwork through and there is a background pattern to it - now when I move the artwork the background pattern doesn't move with it - meaning it looks different when I move it - I want it to look the same so is there a way I can flatten the background pattern?
No layers are locked - in fact the artwork is one layer.
Many thanks - Adobe live help were no good and terminated the conversation rather abruptly with no help whatsoever!

Ahh that's great.
Now next this is can I transform these patterns into vector shapes that I can alter?
I ask as I KNOW that when I send it to print I'll have our printers coming back asking me if I can add bleed or beef up said background pattern.
Thanks people

Screen printing & controlling size of dot pattern in gradient halftones gradien

I'm using A Mac OS 10.6.8, and Illustrator CS5.
I do garment screen printing.
In my designs I use a gradient, which needs to have the halftone dots controlled, and a certain size, to expose properly on my screens to then print.
I can't seem to figure out how to adjust the frequency or LPI, and the angle so that they work. It still prints out as a seen on screen
Thanks ahaead of time for your reply.
[ signature removed by forum host ]

Mark,
I answered your questions in my previous post.
As you can see, the dot size is much smaller as the DPI is increased.
Of course. As I explained, the higher the halftone frequency (the standard term for which is Lines Per Inch, not Dots Per Inch); the more halftone dots per measure; therefore the smaller the dots.
Once converted into halftone dots, just select > expand appearance...
As I explained in response to your question about the screen printer being able to edit the "halftone" settings: If the plug-in applies a live effect, the printing house would have to have the same plug-in to alter the effect settings. (He'd also have to have a sufficient proficiency in Illustrator, which you cannot assume.) If you expand the effect, it's then "nailed down" as non-live paths and the printer will not be able to change the LPI.
Honestly, you should take a look at their plug-ins, they're amazing!
It's not that amazing. I have my own scripts which do pretty much the same kind of faux halftone.
This is not actual halftoning. In a real halftone, the dots change shape as they cover more area. Look at a printed grayscale ramp with a loup and you'll see that as the tones cross the 50% range, they "morph" from black dots on a white field into white dots on a black field; they don't just become larger and larger black dots choking out the white areas.
Nor is this the same thing at all as a drawing program properly providing object-level halftone settings, as does FreeHand. FreeHand lets you assign actual PostScript halftone settings at the object level. The printer's RIP builds the halftone as true halftones at print time. For example, in FreeHand, you can set an object to print as a line halftone pattern at 30 LPI, and another object to print as a diamond halftone pattern at 50 LPI. Both halftones are applied by the printer, not by actually drawing a kazillion tiny paths in the FreeHand document. This is just one of those areas in which Illustrator is still decades-deficient in providing valuable functionality.
So, I'm just trying to figure out the best way to approach this.
Again: Assuming your concern is just to be able to print a halftone ruling that the printing house can hold, you need to find out from the printing house what that halftone ruling is. Just saying it's screen printing is not enough. Screen printing shops run the gamut from small mom & pop shops using an almost entirely manual process to high end large outfits running very large, elaborate, and expensive equipment--and everything in between.
As a general rule, halftoning really doesn't look very good on garments anyway--especially when done by small-to-medium shops--because of the course halftone rulings required. Talented and innovative screen-centric designers and screen print houses avoid actual halftones and actual process color, and instead utilize clever hatching or stippling techniques in the artwork, often involving multiple additional inks (several greens, for example). The result is vibrant, brilliant color, because it's really rendered as posterized solid line art. Next time you're at any mainstream department store, take a look at the most brilliant T-shirt pictorials--the ones of dinosaurs and colorful fantasy images. Study them up close and you'll see they are not ordinary process or ordinary halftoning.
If I were using Illustrator for something destined for T-shirt printing, and using tint screens not intended as a special effect, but just as an attempt to minimize ink count by overprinting a small set of opaque spot inks in a process kind of way, I would simply set the halftone settings for the ink at the document level at print time--which is all Illustrator can do.
...tell me exactly what to ask the printer...
Again: Ask the printer what is the highest halftone screen ruling he can reliably and consistently hold. Then it's up to you whether that's good enough for your satisfaction, or if you need to find a more capable screen printing shop, or whether you need to redo the artwork using a lineart method for suggesting tones.
JET

Recoloring a halftone pattern in Illustrator

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