Specifying custom halftone screens for Bitmap-mode images

The Custom Pattern option in the Bitmap dialog box simulates the effect of printing a grayscale image through a custom halftone screen. This method lets you apply a screen texture, such as a wood grain, to an image. To use this option, you must first define a pattern. (See Filling and stroking selections and layers.)

You can create a pattern representing the texture you want and then screen the grayscale image to apply the texture. To cover the entire image, the pattern must be as large as the image. Otherwise, the pattern will be tiled. For example, if you apply a 1-inch-by-1-inch pattern to a 4-inch-by-4-inch image, the pattern appears as 16 squares. Adobe Photoshop comes with several self-tiling patterns that can be used as halftone screen patterns. (See the procedure to use a pattern from the PostScript Patterns folder in Filling and stroking selections and layers.)

Because the Custom Pattern option simulates dark and light colors by making the halftone pattern thicker and thinner, it makes sense to choose a pattern that lends itself to thickness variations, typically one with a variety of gray shades.

To prepare a black-and-white pattern for conversion, you can first convert the image to grayscale and then apply the Blur More filter several times. This blurring technique creates thick lines tapering from dark gray to white.