Yes you can! Ā In fact, this was one of the reasons I first fell in love with Inkscape many years ago. Ā I spent endless hours playing with home-made halftones.
First you should experiment with tiled clonesĀ [Edit > Clone > Create Tiled Clones...] and when you're familiar with them look to the last tab in the dialog, the Trace tab. Ā This lets you modify the clones based on the underlying Ā pixels. Ā For a classic halftone image, create clones of a small circle and adjust the size in proportion to the image brightness.
For more complex halftones, instead of using a circle for your initial tile, use a group. Ā This allows you to change the halftone pattern to any complex imageĀ you can imagine. On my low-powered ancient laptop, Inkscape strugglesĀ to render large sets of complex clones.
Your post is under Beginner's Questions so I'm not sure if all of thisĀ makes sense to you. Ā I can add more detail if you need it. Ā Let us know how you get on and show us the results. Ā
There are ways to do so but requires a considerableĀ amount of effort getting to the exact effect.Ā
Like, on topĀ of the halftone effect in your image there is a custom distortion going on affecting each line separately so it definitely is a challenge.
Ā
Made much simpler halftone traces before with svg templates released at openclipartĀ -not sure if they are still working.Ā
This is a late response, but I couldn't turn down the challenge.Ā I tried to reproduceĀ your halftone example above andĀ IĀ came reasonablyĀ close. It's not as slick as VectorRaster but it shows some Inkscape possibilities. There areĀ lots of clones and lots of nodes and theĀ svg came toĀ 525k so IĀ compressed the attachment.
thanks for trying that out! It looks pretty good. I tried a bit but didn't make it far, I got stuck with only being able to change the size of the entity, but not keeping it the same and moving it.
Beginners' Questions Creating Complex Halftones
Inkscape.org
I am wondering if there is any way to create complex halftone/raster effects, like the below screengrab from VectorRaster 8.
https://www.lostminds.com/vectoraster8/
https://halftonepro.com/
Yes you can! Ā In fact, this was one of the reasons I first fell in love with Inkscape many years ago. Ā I spent endless hours playing with home-made halftones.
First you should experiment with tiled clonesĀ [Edit > Clone > Create Tiled Clones...] and when you're familiar with them look to the last tab in the dialog, the Trace tab. Ā This lets you modify the clones based on the underlying Ā pixels. Ā For a classic halftone image, create clones of a small circle and adjust the size in proportion to the image brightness.
For more complex halftones, instead of using a circle for your initial tile, use a group. Ā This allows you to change the halftone pattern to any complex imageĀ you can imagine. On my low-powered ancient laptop, Inkscape strugglesĀ to render large sets of complex clones.
Your post is under Beginner's Questions so I'm not sure if all of thisĀ makes sense to you. Ā I can add more detail if you need it. Ā Let us know how you get on and show us the results. Ā
There are ways to do so but requires a considerableĀ amount of effort getting to the exact effect.Ā
Like, on topĀ of the halftone effect in your image there is a custom distortion going on affecting each line separately so it definitely is a challenge.
Ā
Made much simpler halftone traces before with svg templates released at openclipartĀ -not sure if they are still working.Ā
Here is an example:
https://openclipart.org/image/800px/290503
link to the svg:
https://openclipart.org/detail/290503/fuji-3
Hey @Paddy_CAD
That is awesome - I did not know you can modify clones based on underlying pixels. Will try this out and report back.
Hopefully, it will work without considerable effort that @LazurĀ warns about - and that tI assumed. And great pic
This is a late response, but I couldn't turn down the challenge.Ā I tried to reproduceĀ your halftone example above andĀ IĀ came reasonablyĀ close. It's not as slick as VectorRaster but it shows some Inkscape possibilities. There areĀ lots of clones and lots of nodes and theĀ svg came toĀ 525k so IĀ compressed the attachment.
Hi Paddy_CAD,
thanks for trying that out! It looks pretty good. I tried a bit but didn't make it far, I got stuck with only being able to change the size of the entity, but not keeping it the same and moving it.
Any tips? And did it take long?
Best,
Adrian
It took about an hour of trial and error to figure out a method, but now I could repeat it in a few minutes.
I updated theĀ tutorial withĀ more detail butĀ fewer steps.Ā Try working through this and let me know if you get stuck.