Halftone screen patterns are a key ingredient of retro design, but it can be difficult to find or create realistic screentone style resources. Photoshop and Illustrator can produce halftone effects, but the result is a series of perfectly formed circles which don’t look very antique at all and fail to capture that grungy rock poster vibe. I’ve manually created a collection of distressed halftone patterns by hand to achieve that authentic printed appearance. There’s 12 patterns in total, each varying in dot size and density to provide a range of texturing resources.
Halftone screen patterns are the perfect type of texture to replicate the characteristics of old hand printed posters. Overlay the pattern over portions of your design or illustration work to instantly add retro style shading and screen print effects. All these halftone textures are created manually to capture that old distressed feel.
This free pack of halftone effects contains 12 patterns as both 1000px texture files and repeating swatches in the form of a Photoshop .pat file. Each pattern has different dot size and density so you can choose from light subtle texturing to harsh heavy shading.
How to use the halftone patterns
The repeating pattern swatches are all contained in a Photoshop .pat file. Select the Fill tool and change the drop down menu in the header from ‘Foreground’ to ‘Pattern’. Select the ‘Load Patterns’ option from the flyout menu and navigate to the .pat file. These patterns can then be applied directly to your designs with the Fill tool.
Each pattern is also available as a handy PNG image that can be pasted into your design document and used as a typical texture file. Invert the file to choose between black and white dots then alter the blending mode to Multiply or Screen to render the background transparent. Clip the texture to specific areas of your illustrations to add cool comic book style shading effects.
Download the free halftone patterns
This set of distressed halftone pattern textures is free to everyone. Download and Unzip the archive to access the folder of patterns and texture files. If you find these resources useful, the best way to say thanks is to help spread the word on Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest etc. I hope you enjoy them!
Download the distressed halftone patterns 3mb
Want more? Check out these great related products
The following resources cost a little money, but I definitely recommend checking these related products out to complement my Distressed Halftone Patterns.
Retro Halftone Textures
Subtle Halftone Textures
Just Good Textures Halftone Lines
Chris,
Much good Karma for your continued generosity. Have only had a quick tinker but they look beaut.. Thank You
Thanks a lot! God bless you!
Awesome!
That’s exactly what I need for my new project! Thanks Chris <3
Hey, thanks Chris for this great resource, will shurely use it and pass to others.
Noooo! You come out with these just days after I scrabble around for decent retro halftones. Ah well, now I have these for the next project!
I love it!
Wow Chris, these are awesome man. loving your site also, top design.
Thank you very much for this resource!! :D
Thank you!!
muchas gracias por tus aportes , una gran ayuda . THY
This is an incredible resource, absolutely fantastic. Thanks for your amazing generosity, Chris– sincerely appreciated!
Thanks :)
Thanks so much, a great time saver!
These are great. By the way, have you ever used Gimp?
This is an awesome freebie! I thank you!
Su
Perfect timing. I’ve been looking for a decent halftone pattern for the last week or so. This looks fantastic.
Thank you, I love your freebies and your tips.
Thank you very much for the patterns, definitely passing this on!
Thank you, Chris! You are a rockstar!
Thank you Chris. Very generous. A freebie always goes down well. nice start to my Monday.
thanks a lot! very nice pra xuxu!
These are awesome, thank you so much for sharing! :)
Thank you very much Chris! These patterns are really great! :)
Baie Dankie my Boet :)
A m a z i n g !!! Thanks a lot!!!
Thank you Sir!
I’ve never heard of the half tone pattern but look forward to trying these out. Thanks so much for sharing your hard work. Appreciated. :)
Thank you very much~
Thanks for sharing this great resources!! Much appreciated.
Pretty and cool collection of pattern textures. Nice share !!
Thank you Sir for this article!
Thanks a lot for sharing this. Also loved your tutorial using this resource.
they are dreamy textures, thanks for giving these!
For real informative blog like this is a really helping resource for a needy information seeker. Thanks a lot for your participation by the article.
it is really a great Freebie and help designers to get more diversity in their work. thanks for free 12 Pattern Textures.
Thank you so much for your freebies Chris, x
These are really good, Chris! Quite handy in terms of distressed halftones (particularly so because they’re free). There’s also a pretty good alternative in between a super-clean halftone dot and a distressed halftone dot that I’ve found to be a good “middle ground” as well: http://www.halftone.us/halftone-texture-pattern-raster/
Absolutely fantastic, thank you very much for your generosity in sharing this resource. regards
Thank you so much, Chris, for this amazing freebie. I enjoy designing printable projects like invites and greeting cards. I love retro designs that’s why I was so excited to find your blog site. The thing is, I use AI and not Photoshop. Could I use your designs in AI?
Thank you so much. I always love pop art. I want to learn more. Thank you.
thank you alot they’re amazing
can i use them to print them on a shirt for sale ?
Thanks, Chris!
Thanks for the patterns however will these work on Photoshop CS4, having trouble loading these up.
You are truly blessed at being an artist. Very inspirational!