Playing around with the background of my ‘professional front‘, I wanted to create a neutral base for a series of rotating background images. I devised that a halftone effect would be simple but have the impact I wanted, though I’ve never tried to generate them from scratch before. Based on bktheman34’s Halftone Gradient GIMP Tutorial I discovered it isn’t too difficult.

My steps, for a black foreground to fade into white:

1. Create a new file at the desired size with a white background, ensure that the default colour selections are set (black foreground, white background).
2. Ensuring that black is selected as the forecolour, create your desired gradient effect; I used a radial foreground to transparent.
3. Create a layer below the one with the gradient in the foreground colour (black)
4. With the gradient layer active, select FILTERS > DISTORTS > NEWSPRINT, under SCREEN choose INTENSITY
5. Set CELL SIZE to 40, OVERSAMPLE to 5, click OK
6. Continuing with the distorted gradient layer active, select COLOURS > LEVELS..
7. Under Output Levels, set the lower slider (which is set on the black end) all the way to the right side (the white end), click OK
8. You now can choose to flatten the image or select the gradient layer as needed.

White Halftone Gradient, with the ‘foreground colour’ (black) layer set to invisible

To create a black gradient, continuing the steps:

9. Merge the white gradient layer to the black ‘foreground’ colour layer
10. Choose COLOURS > COLOUR TO ALPHA. Colour select ‘white’ (ffffff) in the From box and click OK

Black halftone gradient, with the ‘background colour’ set to alpha