A live Effects plug-in for Adobe Illustrator CS6 and CC
A playful twist on a traditional technique – Stipplism allows you to explore dot and shape patterns faster and easier than you could ever imagine.
Seamlessly interacting with Illustrator’s native tools to produce high quality vector artwork.
Take your stipple game up a level. Warning: seriously addictive!
Stipple Effect:
Instantly apply a non destructive stipple live effect to any new or old artwork including vector and text.
Stipple Effect:
Various quality controls to adjust uniformity and precision.


Symbol Stipple Effect:
Comprehensive control of individual symbols including scale, colour and orientation.
Symbol Stipple Effect:
Encourages limitless experimentation with symbols to feed your creativity.

Example Artwork
The artwork above was created using Stipplism.
carlosgarro –
Another magical tool! Love the endless possibilities of creation.
Andrew Buckle –
Astute Graphics, with the Stipplism plugin, have yet again produced another must-have tool for all kinds of Illustrator users. Stipplism can take any artwork and turn it into a surreal dot masterpiece but it doesn’t stop there. Using symbols as a source, all kinds of sketch / scribble / distressed effect / image / type etc artworks are possible. It is truly unlimited. Really struggled to think of anything else I would love to see add to the plugin. Simple to use but truly powerful. Another indespensible plugin tool
Sean ferguson –
Imagine creating a million dots by hand. Now imagine you can do it with the click of a button. You can. It’s that easy!
Frens Veldstra –
Stipplism is just Fantastic, Simplistic, Stipplistic!
David –
First time I’ve ever regretted an Astute purchase! It’s my own fault – I should’ve downloaded the demo before shelling out my £42.00 (not £35.00 as indicated). While I can see the huge potential of the Stipplism Plugin I have to say that it’s massively disappointing in reality. Buyers should be aware that it’s really not designed for use with photographs, despite the images used to promote it – just previewing the desired result is incredibly frustrating. And that’s on a very small file size. I’ve tried using it to add texture to illustrations etc, but even the task of stippling a gradient on text at only level 4 quality with a small dot size is an exercise in watching paint dry, and then Illustrator freezes and you have to execute a force quit. This would have been a world beating plugin if it worked as advertised, but unfortunately it’s a very long way off being useful for anything. I note with sadness that the previous review which drew attention to Stipplism’s drawbacks has been removed. Come on Astute – you can do better than this!
JK –
Hi David, I will try to address some of your concerns;
The removed comment was a duplicate, it had been posted and responded to on this page
http://astutegraphics.com/blog/stipplism-launch/#comment-205373
We contacted the author and explained the comment would be left there and let him know that he was welcome to add a review to the product page if he wished. We don’t remove or edit reviews unless they are spam.
VAT is added in the EU, which is made clear throughout most of the site but not on the Stipplism page and we will be addressing this. Sorry if you found that misleading, it was not intended to be and it will be made clearer.
Finally, Stipplism is designed for use with photographs, most of the example images were created from photographs. When I started using Stipplism I experienced processing delays initially too, but with high resolution photographs there is an enormous amount of processing to be done. I found that using lower resolution images solved the problem. There is also no need to use a quality setting of more than 1 for experimentation. Please send me an example file and I will take a look and may be able to help. I would be happy to send you a few examples I have worked on if you like, it would be interesting to see what processing times are with those. Stick with it though David, the results can be amazing.
Irving Fuentes –
First of all any person involved in the design world should know that Ilustrator is a VECTOR program that is not really meant for editing photos even though it has some filters and effects that do the job. What i mean is that you should know where you standing, what are you trying to achive and if you have enough resources in your machine for it.
Yes, Stipplism can take quite some time to make complex and detailed stuff but is a great plug in and after working for a few days with it i found workarounds to work with complex images but im not the right person to give advise on how to use it.
christianschnatz1 –
Stipplism is a great tool setting up various symbols in shapes based on colour gradients.
We’re using that for shop design quite often.
What is missing is the action to change direction/order of symbols in circle shapes: To have the inner above it needs manual work.
No problem with a few symbols but quite time consuming with hundreds.
Anyway a great tool!
Ryder Booth –
Really useful for adding graphic detail to images. You can layer stipple objects to create more complex patterns and if you keep the areas relatively simple you can avoid the chug.
Really, don’t crank up the detail until you are done and it’s very responsive.
The shape stipple is extremely powerful actually, with some pre-planning for the illustration you can really get some nice results. I’m using it in conjunction with inkquest to do some t-shirt designs.
Ricky –
This is awesomee!!!!
Kesya Tiara –
I tried the demo and I find it very useful, no need to create dots anymore
kim kirby –
I love this tool but I had to drop some stars for it not being the time efficient addition to my work flow I had hoped it would be. The abort button doesn’t really abort. I usually have to save before utilizing the effect and then cross my fingers it works within an hour and I don’t have to force quit Illustrator and start over.
nick –
Hi Kim – thank you for your feedback. Indeed – if you do request a detailed stippled effect, even though it will remain many, many time faster than performing the task manually, it will take time. Please refer to the product videos for information on how best to work with this tool.
kylesctty –
I bought this plugin on Nov. 24, 2017 its been 4 days and still haven’t received the link for the plug in after purchase! I’ve received a PayPal receipt but no sign up conformation or anything. Total rip off, you’ll be hearing from me again soon.
Lorna –
Hi Kyle,
Thanks for your enquiry.
Your automated emails were sent to your email address on 24th November. We also replied to your support request email on 25th November.
Please note however, that as you are a gmail user your emails may have gone into your promotions folder rather than the Inbox or Junk folder. Please check there if you don’t see them in your inbox/junk.
All records/invoices of purchases made can also be viewed by logging into your customer account and selecting ‘Orders’. To install, please can I ask you to login to your account where you will be able to download and run the latest installer from the ‘Downloads’ section.
Within your account under ‘My Plug-ins and Keys’, you will also find details of the license key number associated with your purchase. You can then select the plug-in to be installed and enter the license key number into the activation window when prompted. For step by step instruction on installing and activating, please refer to our Installation Guide.
Please let us know if we can help further.