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How to Make a Photo Suitable for Faxing - Photo to B&W Dot Pattern

From Sue Chastain,
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Converting a Photo to a B&W Dot Pattern

Before and after converting a photo to a black and white dot pattern for faxing.
Before and after converting a photo to a black and white dot pattern for faxing.
© Copyright Don Moore
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A reader wrote to me looking for software that he could use to convert photos into a black & white image suitable for faxing, similar to the stipple drawings, or hedcuts, used in The Wall Street Journal. This tutorial explains how I used Photoshop to achieve the black and white version of the head shot shown here. It's not as striking or detailed as the hand-drawn hedcuts used in the Wall Street Journal, but it should be better suited for a fax, compared to the original color photo.
Note that I didn't actually try faxing this image. You may need to experiment with different image sizes and print resolutions to find the best results for faxing.
  1. Converting a Photo to a B&W Dot Pattern
  2. Select the Background
  3. Simplify by Filling the Background with White
  4. Convert to B&W Using Channel Mixer
  5. Convert to Indexed Color with Dithering

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