Swan Halftone Illustration

In this quick tutorial I will show you how to add a dotted bitmap effect to your designs and create a layered print-style illustration.

We’ll start by applying a bitmap effect to our swan photo which can be downloaded here.

First you will need to cut out the swan from it’s background. To make this easier you can increase the brightness of the photo when you are selecting it. (remember to undo the brightness adjustment after you’ve made your selection)

Use the Refine Selection box to tidy up your selection, however it doesn’t need to be perfect.

Now delete the background and Grayscale your image.

Next increase the brightness and contrast.

Now open up the Color Halftone dialogue box.

Set the radius to about 6 pixels.

And there you go, your swan is now made up of black dots.

Now open a new document 2500 x 2500 pixels, and fill it with a cream colour (f0eede)

Place the swan into the new document and resize it.

Change the swan layer’s blending mode to Multiply.

Next we will add some clouds using the same techniques.

Go here to download the cloud image. Grayscale it, and boost the brightness and contrast.

In the Color Halftone box, set the radius to 15 pixels.

And then place the clouds into your document, remembering to change it’s blending mode to Multiply.

Add a layer mask to the cloud layer and use a large soft black brush to mask out the edges of the cloud image, and the places where it overlaps the swan.

Then give the swan layer a layer mask, and mask out the bottom edge.

Your feathers can be downloaded for free here.

Use the lasso tool to select each feather and place it onto your image.

Keep adding feathers to create a curve around the swan.

Next we will add some flying swans to the background. The image can be downloaded here.

Go to Image>Adjustments>Threshold and move the slider to the right until the sky is completely white, leaving the just swans visible.

Now place the swans onto your image, and set them to Multiply.

Next we will add some texture to our image. You can download the texturehere.

Desaturate it and raise the contrast.

Then place it onto your image, and resize it if necessary. Change it’s blending mode to Multiply.

And finally we will add the red beak. Use the pen tool to draw a very basic shape, then right click and choose Fill Path.

Select Color from the box and choose red.

And that is all.

Thank you for reading!