How To Create a Stipple Illustration Effect in Adobe Photoshop

In today's Adobe Photoshop video tutorial I'm going to show you a technique I come up with to replicate those intricate stippled illustrations that are made out of thousands of tiny dots, but without the tedious process of dabbing each dot with a pen.
When it comes to traditional art styles like this, the best results are always achieved by painstakingly working by hand for hours on end, but I think this digital effect actually looks pretty authentic. We'll create a series of patterns which will help us fill out the spread of dots much faster, then use some simple filters to apply the stippling to an image.
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[@breathingtokyo]

This is one of the most unique tutorials I've seen on youtube, many thanks!

[@spoongraphics]

Thanks Yuffie!

[@thedailyshaver1171]

Spoon Graphics How come you haven't upload any video's on your gaming and Vlogging Channel since before Christmas Chris?

[@Anticrystal88]

Brilliant!

[@MichaelScottPerkins]

100% agree! Amazing

[@TheDudeCanRoll]

Great tutorial! It really seems like there should be a built in filter to do an effect like this.

[@GallantiandMellizo]

👍 The best tecnique. thankyou so much for this tutorial. Greetings from Venezuela.

[@Brian-gj5xm]

Wow! I would never have figured out how to do this. Thanks!

[@azninvasion]

dude the technique you used in this is amazing! I am loving the results from this!

[@sekenikola]

Stippling for me is relaxing and when I see what I did at the and it's so satisfying.

[@spoongraphics]

I don't think I have the patience to create an authentically stippled illustration. I'd get too frustrated if I end up with a 'tail' from one of my dots from dabbing too fast!

[@sekenikola]

I will reply you with one of my work on facebook ;)

[@charizzeashleyusi8098]

This saves me for my grade on Summative online Exam on representing different art styles. Thank you so much for this wouldn't have been able to make art in this very simple steps! Bless you and awesome tutorial :)

[@omarabdelnasser827]

you're a genius!

[@bhmcat]

wow.. you are a genius !!! Thank you!!!!!

[@duncanhurst2888]

Thank you again for a very straight forward and easy to follow video.

[@spoongraphics]

Join my mailing list at Spoon Graphics if you want to keep up with all my other content. Every subscriber gets a FREE design resources bundle! 📦 spoon.graphics/2ynU0eH

[@matthewss1021]

This has been incredibly helpful. Thank you!!

[@DeLaRic]

What an awesome tutorial. Thank you for the inspiration.

[@ProWings79]

you are a god. thank you.

[@zoobloo]

Exactly the effect I was looking for! Anyone have any idea how you could achieve a similar effect for video using After Effects?

[@VeronikaPoloni]

That looks so.... satisfying 😍 I'm gonna give it a try, thanks! Here, have my like!

[@arthurmill3042]

one of the best guides thank you !!!!!

[@randylaheys]

great video and even better tutorial!

[@livebig6414]

simple but very useful, thank you again for making videos.

[@Amal-ux7ok]

This is amazing

[@zaklay9399]

Why am I getting the inverse effect? At 0:56 my board is black and specks are white. I've followed all steps verbatim until this point.

[@Sabirali00139]

Thank you Chris one more amazing tutorial i learn some new Technic god bless you and keep posting amazing tutorial.

[@tnw47caz]

Holy Smokes! Amazing tutorial +1 Definitely gonna try this out. Keep up the good work!

[@youwillsuffer2068]

so much thanks man, you really help me

[@diegoapto701]

Fantastic

[@sothathappened]

brilliant

[@AmolImpal]

thank you for such a useful tutorial 👌👌

[@jordanclarke8166]

This has been an art attack

[@DaveTylerBC]

Brilliant. Could I also apply the dots using luminence selections ?

[@totodepatas]

This is genius

[@irenahurina9351]

Thank you VERY much!

[@leemylks7600]

quite honestly one of the 'best value' of any KZbin Tutorial I've ever seen. It's right to the point - so to speak. No joke tho - really nice, neat, compact, quick-to-learn Techie Tut, to pull off this useful and artistic effect. As far as these vids go, I think it's the best I've ever seen. GJ & Thx!!!

[@quincybattieste]

Love this video. Was looking for weeks for my company to find an adequate filter to do this with doing it digitally by hand. Will join your "club" for now on. I do have a couple of questions: can you make an action or preset outta this? Can you do the same thing with programs like Affinity Photo and GIMP?

[@nanaklysm18]

Excelent thank you!!!

[@dizzybeepot9856]

The 1 minute version of creating this: Go to image--> mode-->greyscale , then again image--> mode-->bitmap. Set your output somewhere between 20-100 (depending on your image resolution and size) + leave all other settings as is. Voila

[@braksow2607]

well, the result is different, but it kind of works

[@kelvinchen6579]

awsome!

[@netimtoons]

Very good!! Show!

[@lylestavast7652]

Nicely done. :)

[@melanieaudet]

There's one step missing in this tutorial. Make your layer BLACK, not white. Then when you go to Filter Gallery > Texture > Grain > change grain type to Stippled, you'll get black dots on a white background (instead of white dots on a black background if you follow this guy's tutorial).

[@zaklay9399]

Thank you!! Seems like a big detail....

[@zaklay9399]

Still getting the same result. Infuriating

[@glemanu89]

Awesome tutorial! Although when i apply the dots i can see something like a square tiled borders where the patterns are applied. Am i doing something wrong when applying the pattern? Anyone with a solution?

[@tareklarine5260]

This is smart :)

[@wayfaringshaman]

Is there a way to make colored pointillism?

[@mercythebuzzard3134]

Trying this right now and no dots are appearing when using the filter gallery

[@jjmcquillan6121]

me too its just a blank white screen no dots

[@paladin995893]

Ooooh

[@tqatkins]

Not working at all for me. There are zero dots when changing the grain type to stippled.

[@moreorlesslikeso]

At first I thought: Why on earth don't you use just Photoshop's Bitmap conversion? This gives sort of similar results when choosing a suitable resolution. But then you get perfect square shaped stipples and you have little to no control over how certain tones get translated into those stipples... So this is really an interesting way to do it. It relates, I think - in a way - to your tutorial about giving photos that "engraving lines" effect. Last but not least I guess you could actually produce even more rounded stipples if you modified the process of generating those patterns a bit - e.g. by raising the patterns' resolution first, then applying a blur, then adjusting the levels to make them look sharper (and rounder) again and finally reduce the patterns' resolution again to what it has been before. At least this technique works quite well when smoothing lo-res jagged looking line art a bit.

[@spoongraphics]

Great idea on increasing the size of the dots. This is indeed based on the same principle as the engraving effect. The same process could be applied to different kinds of patterns too. I wonder if a series of short dashed lines would replicate the popular Wall Street Journal illustration effect

[@mythilik944]

How to calculate stippling dots in our drawing

[@qaannat]

smart.

[@anthonycandelario3469]

If I wanted to do this with color instead of black and white, what would be the best approach ?

[@NextgenSkillz]

Did you ever find the answer?

[@kochertv8795]

idk whats going on my no pixels appear for me when i first apply the filter texture

[@novyjezkova3954]

for some reason mine came out looking like a blue grain/ cyanotype... any advice?

[@jarlydesigns921]

my dots ended up being blurry on the finished piece anyway to fix this?

[@KLSeba]

How do I adjust the stipple to larger dots when I work on higher resolution? One I do 1000x100 or 150/300 dpi, they become super tiny and plenty of it.

[@skyhighproductions]

Make sure your default colours are set to black and white or it won't work right

[@malcolmhj1a]

thank you sir

[@theflatsixth]

Thank you so much!

[@riconm01]

Why did you/he make the pattern 500x500 pixels?

[@nicmart]

Nothing like the style and quality of real stippling. See Wall Street Journal.

[@arthurmill3042]

Commad J on mac CTRL J on windownds ;)

[@chrisnortcliffe3663]

Hi could you help me please

[@osmanymn3657]

This is what I looked for long time... seems like weawing picture on the carpet...

[@soumyajitchoudhury9641]

can anybody please do it for me?? plz plz

[@gastongaston168]

[@HorribleHomeVideo]

convulted tutorial, very bloated. next time trim it by half and get the same steps across, you made it harder than it is

[@scream-beam3519]

this was painful