Image Dithering Tool

Dithering creates the illusion of more shades than a palette really has by scattering pixels of the available colors. It was born of necessity in early computers, newspapers and printers, and it lives on as an aesthetic in pixel art, zines, album covers and indie games. This tool offers both pixel dithering and printed halftone dots.

Dithering in a nutshell

If a palette has only black and white, a middle gray can be shown as a mix of black and white pixels in the right proportion. The eye blends them at normal viewing distance. Different algorithms decide where to place those pixels, and each leaves a recognizable texture.

Error diffusion algorithms

Floyd–Steinberg, Jarvis, Stucki, Burkes and the Sierra variants all work the same way at heart: each pixel is set to the nearest palette color and the rounding error is distributed to its unprocessed neighbors. They differ in how widely they spread that error. Floyd–Steinberg is fine and organic, Jarvis and Stucki smoother, Sierra Lite fast and slightly coarser. Atkinson spreads only part of the error, giving high-contrast results with clean whites, the look of early Macintosh graphics.

Ordered dithering

Bayer matrices of 2×2, 4×4 or 8×8 compare each pixel with a fixed threshold pattern. The result is a regular, crosshatched texture that looks deliberate and tiles well, typical of many classic games. Larger matrices give more distinct gray levels.

Retro palettes

Choose black and white for 1-bit art, or 4 or 8 grays for e-paper and early handhelds. Game Boy uses the four greens of the 1989 handheld; CGA mode 4 the cyan, magenta and white of early PCs; PICO-8, Commodore 64 and EGA give their 16-color sets; newsprint simulates ink on paper. Two custom colors let you make duotone dithers in any brand colors.

Working width

Dithering happens pixel by pixel, so the size you process at defines the look. A working width of 200 to 400 pixels creates the classic chunky style. The preview shows hard pixel edges, without the smoothing that would hide them. For printing or display on a device, use its exact pixel width.

Halftone dots

The halftone mode turns the image into a screen of dots that grow larger in darker areas, the way newspapers and comics print photos. Dot spacing sets the coarseness; screen angle rotates the pattern, with 45 degrees the traditional choice for black ink; dot shape can be round, square or lines. Choose ink and paper colors, or make the paper transparent for overlays and screen-printing films.

Saving

PNG keeps every pixel exact and is the right format for dithered art; JPG compression would blur the pattern. WebP lossless also works for the web.

Where dithering is still needed

E-paper readers and shelf labels, thermal receipt printers, laser engravers, some LED matrices and many microcontroller displays can show only black and white or a few grays. For them, dithering is not a style but the only way to show a photo. Engraving software often expects a 1-bit PNG at the machine’s resolution, which this tool produces directly.

Related tools

For pixel art with block sizes and palettes, use the Pixel Art Converter. For flat-color poster effects, try Posterize Image. Plan screen mesh for halftone prints with the Screen Printing Calculator.