Here is a quick way to produce a neat halftone effect in Photoshop that can be used to give your compositions a little more complexity.

Step One – Setup the Document

Start off by creating a new document with the dimensions of 800px by 800px.

Step Two – Black to White Gradient

Create a new layer and fill it with a blank-to-white gradient. Try and make the gradient fairly even across the entire document.

Step Three – Apply the Halftone Filter

Select the entire gradient layer and goto Filter > Pixelate > Color Halftone… and fill it in with the settings below.

Step Four – Rotate the Halftone Layer

Next we can rotate the halftone layer by around 45 degrees counter clockwise.

Step Five – Crop it Down

Next make a selection near the centre of the halftone and crop it – I ended up cropping a section of ~ 615px by 300px.

Step Six – Apply a Pleasing Gradient

Choose a nice two color gradient (I choose blue). You now have two options. The first is to create a new gradient layer above your halftone layer and then reduce the gradient layer’s opacity to a suitable level. Or, the second option is to put a gradient layer below the halftone layer, set the halftone layer’s blending option to “Darken“, and reduce the halftone layer’s opacity until you find a good level. Either way the effect will be similar!

And there you have it – a quick and easy halftone effect that you can use to make neat backgrounds!