Halftone Fill
An ordered dot screen whose dot size follows image darkness.
Halftone places dots on a regular rotated grid. Dark regions receive larger dots; light regions receive smaller dots or empty cells. It is well suited to newspaper, screen-print, comic, and pop-art aesthetics.
Controls
- Thickness scales the dot diameter.
- Spacing sets the grid interval.
- Angle rotates the dot screen.
- Organic jitters dot positions and turns perfect circles into subtly irregular forms.
The Dot Shape button on the Spacing row offers Circle, Square, Rhomb, Triangle, and Star. It replaces the normal stroke-alignment menu while Halftone is selected. Linestra adjusts the polygon sizes so their visual coverage remains comparable to circular dots.
Try Thickness 8, Spacing 12, Angle 30°, Organic 0. Use 45° for a familiar diagonal print screen.
Color
Static mode uses one Illustrator color. Dynamic Color samples each dot from its location in the source, creating a color halftone without separate CMYK screens.
Performance
Small Spacing values create many dots and a larger Illustrator appearance. Increase Spacing before increasing object dimensions if interactive editing becomes slow.
For a strict mechanical print look, keep Organic at 0. For imperfect ink or handmade dots, try Organic 15–35. With polygonal shapes, Organic also moves individual corners by small deterministic amounts, creating a less mechanical silhouette without changing the selected shape or losing repeatability.