Halftone
A non-destructive adjustment that screens any scoped content — images, vector shapes, text, groups — into clustered dots, lines, or stochastic texture, and keeps the editable source underneath.
Apply a halftone
- Select the artwork (or leave nothing selected to affect the page) and create anAdjustment Layer.
- In the Adjustments tab choose Add adjustment → Halftone.
- Pick a Preset as a starting point, then tune frequency, angle, and shape. The source stays editable; toggling the adjustment off restores it exactly.
Read the controls
- Method — AM uses clustered dots (classic print look); FM uses a stochastic threshold on a single density plane (CMYK FM follows the black separation). FM offers Blue noise (recommended, preview and export match),Bayer (regular ordered pattern), and Error diffusion(full-frame export quality).
- Shape — round, elliptical, square, diamond, line, cross, or ring. Shape selection changes the dot geometry without changing tone.
- Frequency (LPI) — lines per inch in document units. The panel shows the resulting period in pixels at 96 ppi; when the period drops below about 3 px, raise the export resolution instead of trusting the preview.
- Angle — mono screens only. Process (CMYK) screens use standard press angles per ink.
- Threshold shifts how much of the tone becomes ink; Intensityblends the screened result with the original; Softness anti-aliases dot edges without changing coverage.
- Ink / Paper colors are available for single-ink screens, andAlpha → Screen ink into alpha turns a mono screen into a true ink-on-transparency screentone.
Process screening (CMYK)
Selecting the CMYK channel screens each process ink separately at its own angle and recombines them for a preview. Advanced controls expose per-channel angles and registration offsets, black generation (GCR or shadow-only UCR) with strength, a total ink limit, and a Show ink selector for inspecting a single plate. This is an artistic process-screen preview, not an ICC separation or press-calibrated proof.
Document-space behavior
The screen is anchored in document coordinates: panning and zooming never shift the pattern or change its ruling, and two objects at the same document position share the same screen phase. Export at higher resolution resolves more samples per cell while keeping the same physical frequency.
Legacy screens
Documents created before the corrected 2026 screen contract keep their original rendering so artwork does not change underneath you. Their Inspector shows Legacy screenwith an Update to corrected screening action that keeps every setting and renders the requested ruling and shape accurately. New effects always start on the corrected contract.
Export
Halftones export through the canonical render pipeline at the requested resolution. SVG and PDF cannot encode a screen structurally, so the affected subtree is rasterized with the full filter stack and embedded while the rest of the page stays vector. Preview and export use the same algorithm for AM and ordered FM; error diffusion applies only to full-frame export.
Limitations
Screening is CPU-based. CMYK and duotone modes are uncalibrated artistic simulations, not press-ready separations, and standard screen angles are conventions rather than a universal moiré guarantee. Halftone output is raster, not editable vector dots; there is no vector conversion export.