How to make a dotty halftone gradient effect?

[James Loudon]

So I am working on designing some tattoos that I want to be done using a dotwork fill, like this:
I cannot find any way to get near this sort of fill! Maybe someone has designed a plugin, or let me know if you have other ideas. At present all I can think is to manually make a fill with dots and ink on paper, scan it and use as a bitmap fill. It will not be the actual artwork used but needs to be close as poss, as the tattoo artist will obviously use her own skills and method.
Thanks

[Gamerprinter]

I wish I could answer you more specifically to a current application. I used to use Micrografx Picture Publisher - a long extinct image editing sofware application, that had preset filters, and one of them was for creating half-tone effects. I am sure that either a prebuilt artistic filter in Photoshop or other image editor, or perhaps a specific 3PP plug-in might do this trick. I haven't looked, but am certain it exists. Look up "half-tone filter" for Photoshop or Photoshop plug-in...

[handrawn]

not really a halftone - more like a 'spray' of dots, such as you could make with a corel painter brush for example, more than one application with some softening to mimic the effect on skin

not something I would even attempt in vector, but someone here may well be able to do it

corel painter is far too expensive just for this, but any bitmap editor with a 'spray' brush, airbrush or otherwise, may be worth looking at

[James Loudon]

I used to use Micrografx Picture Publisher too - great program. Shame they got killed. For years that program lead the way and was far better for effects such as drop shadows, bevels, and export for web than Photoshop was.
Yes, it is not a halftone but thats as near a description as I could get. Spray of dots - indeed. Tried various Photoshop brush types, nothing comes close.

[mwenz]

The "precision" of exactly making the art look like an actual tat isn't likely needed. Tat artists often work off of clip art "precision." In your case, to replicate clip art precision, I would use Illustrator on b/w gradients and using one of Astute Graphics plugins for creating vector halftones.

[gwpriester]

Here's how I would do this.

[James Loudon]

Good call Gary! That will get me very close I think - been using Xara for years but never done that. Many thanks.

[Gamerprinter]

Hah! Gary, I never would have thought of that. What a simpler solution and remaining within Xara to accomplish the task!

[handrawn]

well I guess if you choose your source well you'll get a texture that will suffice, but it wont mimic a tattoo, it will be too 'mechanical; however, it all depends on how realistcally accurate the pattern need to be

[itsfransie]

How about the painting live effect (in Designer Pro X)?

Just draw your shaped and fill them with the required color. I used a gradient fill. Then apply the painting filter. I selected the t_shape4.bmp brush shape, fiddled a bit with density, smallest and biggest brush size (yes, I know the smallest size is bigger than the biggest size...), and set the size to vary by brightness. Set the brush color to black, not "from image".

And finally I set the resolution of the live effect to 300 dpi.


Frans