Textures and tiffs in Illustrator
Texture is a great trick to have in your back pocket. It can add a human, tactile element to otherwise cold digital work, or add a sense of vintage wear and tear. And while you can start piece in Illustrator, save it out, and texture it to high heavens in Photoshop, a lot can be done within Illustrator too. This is my preferred workflow, since it keeps you able to modify the artwork where it was made, and reduces the number of save-outs. I’ve included a handful of examples at the bottom of this post to show you what you can do with these tiffs.
Most of the textures that I work with are in the form of Bitmap .tiffs. Bitmap is an uncompressed image format made up of an even pixel grid. In terms of the textures I most often use, it starts with a black and white, pixel image — whether it’s a halftone, gritty speckles, a dither, or natural textures.
When you render an image into bitmap mode, you can save it as a .tiff and bring this into Illustrator to use as a texture. When you import the tiff, the parts of the tiff that are black can be colored, and the parts of the tiff that are white will remain transparent. It’s a handy trick to use, especially when you put them into clipping masks to help give the texture a defined shape and purpose. I’ll come back to this once we’ve made a few to play with.
How do you make a bitmap tiff?
In Photoshop, you’re probably already familiar with the RBG and CMYK color modes. Think of Bitmap as just another color mode, one that only renders an image in stark black or white. To get to Bitmap in Photoshop, you’ll first have to convert your image to Grayscale (Image » Mode » Grayscale).
There are lots of ways to make tiffs, but the most useful for me is a simple gradient. It can be in halftones (dots, circles, stripes, or if you’re fancy, you can make custom halftone patterns), or a grainy dither, but I find that having a nice fade in value is helpful for adding shading and highlights.
First, I’ll set up a file at 3000x3000 pixels, at 400 DPI in Grayscale mode in Photoshop. I like to work big when making these tiffs, so it’s easier to hide the jagged pixelated edges that come with tiffs. Then, using the gradient tool, make a gradient going from black to white. It can be helpful to leave a little padding on either side where it has space to be fully white and fully black.
Then, convert to Bitmap by going to Image » Mode » Bitmap. You’ll get a little pop-up that lets you configure bitmap options, and this is where the customization begins. Keep the resolution at 400, and change the method to Halftone Screen. Hit OK, and Photoshop will give you a second pop-up with more options to choose from.
Set the Frequency to 8 to start. The lower the number, the bigger the dot will be. This can be a bit confusing at first, but once you’ve done a few experimentations with the halftone settings, it’ll start to click! Set the angle to 0 to start out, and select round. Hit OK.
This is how it looks:
Depending on the illustration you’re working on, this might be perfect. If so, save it out as a .Tiff file, but do not change it to Grayscale before doing so. This is important! In order for this to be colored in Illustrator, it has to stay in Bitmap mode. If this looks too close together, undo and try increasing the frequency to 15 or 20. If it’s too small, decrease the frequency.
You can also change the shape of the halftone pattern:
And the angle. I like to keep the angle at 0 or 45, because they’re easier to tile next to each other. The tiff can always be rotated in Illustrator, so making an unusual angle has never really felt necessary, but play around with what works for you!
You also do not need to start with a gradient. Sometimes an even halftone is handy to throw into clipping masks. Experiment with the percentage of black you start with, because it will impact the outcome:
Instead of choosing the Halftone Pattern on the first screen, you can also choose 50% threshold. This is handy to use natural textures from photos you’ve taken—the tiff to the left is the stucco wall in a former apartment, and when the levels are jammed out to extremes, it can be a helpful speckle or gritty texture. There are no shortage of cool ways to make bitmaps. Experiment with your own photos, the different output methods, and frequencies and save a batch to play with. Add some texture to a gradient to create a more vintage-looking halftone, or try making a less linear gradient. Use natural textures from your own photos — see what you can do with marble, sky, wood, dirt or sandpaper textures.
Using the Tiffs in Illustrator
Now that you have a couple tiffs to use, open a new file in Illustrator and drag in one of these tiffs. It will import in black and white. Once you select the tiff, you can change the fill color! Everything that was black will now render in the color of your choice, and the parts that were white will remain transparent. There is no way to color this as a gradient, or to give it a stroke.
Success! Most of the time I use these within clipping masks, giving the texture a shape to live in. To do this, draw the shape you want, make sure it’s on top of your tiff, and with both the shape and the tiff selected, make it into a clipping mask (Object » Clipping Mask » Make, or ⌘+7). If you have two or more shapes you want to function as one clipping mask, you’ll have to first turn the shapes into a Compound Path (Object » Compound Path » Make, or ⌘+8), and then make a clipping mask as usual.
Things to be aware of
A couple quick cautions before showing examples! When using halftones, be careful of creating moiré patterns. Moiré’s are the optical illusion created from overlapping halftones, and often happen with two different angles or sizes of halftone overlapping. Whether this means you have halftones at 90° on top of one that’s set to 115°, or you have them rotated and scaled differently. While these can be fun to play with, and effective if used correctly, they often look really distracting and headache-inducing.
Because these tiffs work as linked files, I also recommend making a folder on your computer that you don’t plan on moving. I keep them all together in a folder called Textures, organized by Halftone, Dithers, Natural Textures, and so on. Otherwise, you’ll have to re-link the files every time you open the file. And when sending files to clients or to vendors, make sure you package your Illustrator file so that the tiff textures come with it.
Examples
I learned much of this process while working at Delicious Design League. It’s handy there especially because of how much work they do for screen printing, and even in digital work, clients come to DDL looking for that screen printed texture and aesthetic.
That’s it!
Learning about bitmap tiffs was one of the most versatile tricks I’ve picked up. It’s a great way to add a hand-made quality, show a little grit, and get weird.
For more examples of these textures in use, follow me on Instagram, or check out my website. Happy texturing!
