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A route

I want to create an effect.

Halftone, dither, glitch, duotone, risograph and the rest, with live examples. 19 guides, about 72 minutes in total, in the order that gets you there.

The route, in order

  1. The most searched effect, with a working halftone on the page.How to make a halftone portraitA halftone turns a photo into dots on a grid: dark areas get large dots that merge, light areas get small ones or none. To make a good halftone portrait, start with a high-contrast black and white photo on a plain background, choose a dot size that suits where it will be seen (fine for screens, coarse for print and posters), set the contrast so the shadows fill in without swallowing the face, then recolour the dots with a blend mode. Below is a working halftone; move the sliders and watch what each one does.Beginner7 minEffects
  2. What makes riso look like riso, and the five moves that fake it, with a live duotone.How to make a risograph effectA risograph look is five things stacked: two or three flat ink colours instead of full colour, tone made of visible dots (a halftone), inks that darken where they overlap because they are translucent, layers slightly out of register, and grain with the paper showing through. To fake it from a photo: convert the photo to a halftone, map it to one ink on a paper colour with a duotone, set type and shapes in a second ink on Multiply, nudge one ink a few pixels off, and lay a light grain over everything. Start with the duotone below; the full recipe follows.Intermediate5 minEffects
  3. Two colours, one photo: how to pick the pair and apply it in one click.How to make a duotone imageA duotone replaces a photo's greys with a blend between two colours: the darkest areas take the shadow colour, the brightest take the highlight colour, and everything between is a mix. Pick one dark, rich colour and one light, pale one; two colours of similar lightness flatten the photo. In Voidcanvas it is one effect with two colour pickers, below. For a set of photos that need to match, or a photo that has to sit on brand colours, it is the fastest treatment there is.Beginner3 minEffects
  4. Flat colour, dots and ink lines, stacked as filter layers, with a live Pop Art example.How to make a comic book effect from a photoA comic book effect is three layers of printing history stacked on one photo: flat colour (comics were printed in a few inks, so smooth shading becomes bands), halftone dots where the shading was (that is how the inks made mid-tones), and black ink lines on top (the artist's line work). Make them in that order: flatten the colour with Posterize or Pop Art, add a coarse Halftone set to Multiply so the dots sit in the shadows, then add Edge Detect, inverted and set to Multiply, for the lines. A high-contrast photo on a plain background gives the best result; a face at three-quarter angle with a strong light is the classic subject.Beginner4 minEffects
  5. Fade, warmth, grain and dark corners, and the recipe by decade.The vintage photo effect: fade, grain, warmth, vignetteOld prints fade in predictable ways: blacks lift to a soft charcoal, colour shifts warm (blue fades first), grain shows, and corners darken from the lens. The Vintage effect does the fade, the warmth and the corners in one slider. Add Film Grain at a low amount for texture, and Film Burn at half opacity if you want light leaks. Keep it subtle: the best vintage looks could pass for a real old print, not a filter.Beginner2 minEffects
  6. Dots that grow across the page, recoloured with a gradient map.Make a halftone gradient backgroundA halftone turns darkness into dot size, so a gradient from black to white under a Halftone filter becomes dots that shrink from one side to the other. Colour it with a Gradient map above the filter: the first stop colours the dots, the last colours the paper. For dots that grow toward the corners instead, start from a white layer with a Vignette filter. Put the rest of the design above these layers so the filter does not turn it into dots too.Beginner2 minEffects
  7. Fine dots, flat contrast and off-white paper.The newspaper photo effect: halftone, grain and a warm paper tintA newspaper photo has four traits: it is black and white, its contrast is flat (newsprint cannot hold deep blacks or clean whites), it is made of a fine halftone (newspapers print at about 85 to 100 lines per inch), and it sits on off-white paper. Recreate each as a layer: a Black and white adjustment, Curves with the Faded film preset, a Halftone filter with small dots set to Multiply, and a cream colour layer on Multiply at the top, then a little Film Grain. The dots should be just visible at arm's length, not the big pop-art dots of a comic.Beginner2 minEffects
  8. Pencil lines from a photo, and how to keep them clean.Turn a photo into a pencil sketchApply Pencil Sketch: it finds the edges in the photo and draws them as grey lines on white, with flat areas left blank. Line strength sets how dark the lines are and how much texture comes through. For clean lines, give it a photo with clear edges and a plain background, raise the contrast first, and soften fine noise (skin texture, grass, fabric) with a slight blur so it does not turn into scribble. For a pen-and-ink look use Crosshatch or Stipple instead. To keep colour, set the sketch filter layer to Multiply over the photo.Beginner2 minEffects
  9. Grain that looks like film, and how it hides banding.Add film grain that looks like filmUse Film Grain rather than Noise: grain comes in small clumps like silver in film, where Noise is single-pixel speckle that reads as a digital sensor. Keep Amount at 10 to 25 and Grain Size small; grain that is visible from across the room is too much. Put it at the top of the stack, over the photo and over flat colour areas, so everything shares the same texture, and judge it at 100 per cent at the size you will export. Grain also hides gradient banding and mild softness, which is why printed designs often carry a little on purpose.Beginner2 minEffects
  10. How Effects works: load, pick, tune, compare, export, send to the Editor.Use Effects to restyle a photo in one clickLoad a photo, pick one of 58 effects, tune its sliders, compare with the original, then download at full size or send it to the Editor as a live layer.Beginner5 minEffects
  11. Halftone, Dither and Glitch as single-purpose tools with a download.Use the Halftone, Dither and Glitch quick toolsThree single-purpose pages that load with a sample image, give you just the sliders that matter, and download a full-size PNG or send the result to the Editor.Beginner2 minEffects
  12. The lpi, mesh and dot-size numbers when the halftone is going on a shirt.Halftone for screen printing and DTF: the numbersScreen printing: use a coarse halftone, 35 to 55 lines per inch, matched to the mesh (mesh count at least four times the lpi: 156 mesh for 35 to 40 lpi, 230 for about 55). At 300 dpi that is a dot cell of 5.5 to 8.5 px. Keep dots between roughly 10 and 90 per cent so the smallest ones hold on the screen and the largest do not fill in. Supply black dots on white or transparent, one file per ink colour, at final size, as PNG or PDF. DTF is different: the printer's RIP does its own screening, so supply full-resolution artwork with a transparent background and treat any halftone in it as a design choice with coarse dots (a 6 px cell or larger), so the RIP's screen does not fight yours.Intermediate5 minEffects
  13. The threshold, the pattern and why it must be made at final size.Dithering explained: threshold, patterns and when to use itDithering turns every pixel pure black or pure white and spreads the rounding error to its neighbours, so grey becomes a pattern of scattered dots that the eye averages back into tone. It is how early computers and game consoles showed photos, and it reads as retro, printed and deliberate. One control matters: the threshold, which decides where grey tips into black. Make it at the final pixel size, export PNG, and colour it afterwards with a blend mode. Try it below.Beginner3 minEffects
  14. Slices, offset and RGB shift, and where the effect stops helping.The glitch effect: slices, offset and RGB shift explainedA glitch effect cuts the image into horizontal strips and slides some of them sideways, the way a corrupted video frame tears. Three controls: Offset is how far the strips move, Slice height is how tall they are, and Randomize picks which strips move. About three strips in ten shift; the rest stay put, which is what keeps the picture readable. Add an RGB shift for the colour fringe and scanlines or CRT for the screen, and stop before the face disappears. Try it below, then the same tool with a download.Beginner3 minEffects
  15. A risograph or screen-print look, built in Effects and finished in the Editor.Make a risograph or screen-print look with Effects and the EditorFind a halftone look in Effects, rebuild it at print size in the Editor with live filter layers, set one ink on paper with Duotone, overprint type in a second ink, and finish with grain.Intermediate5 minWorkflows
  16. Every artistic effect and what each slider does.Artistic effects and their settingsAll 12 effects in the Artistic tab, from Halftone and Dither to Oil Paint and Woodcut, with what every slider does to the picture.Beginner6 minEffects
  17. Duotone, gradient map, posterize and the other colour effects.Color effects and their settingsAll 12 effects in the Color tab, from Duotone and Gradient Map to Thermal and Night Vision, and how to set their colours so they do what you expect.Beginner5 minEffects
  18. Glitch, RGB shift, pixel sort, wave and the distortions.Distort effects and their settingsAll 12 effects in the Distort tab, from Glitch and RGB Shift to Swirl, Fisheye and Pixel Sort, with what every slider does.Intermediate5 minEffects
  19. The same effects as editable layers inside a design.Use filters as editable layersAdd any of the 58 Void filters from the filter gallery as a live layer, then stack, mask and fade it. Also explains why exports look slightly sharper than the preview.Beginner4 minEditor