Halftone and Dither Effect
Turn a photo into newspaper-style halftone dots or a retro dithered picture. Free, and it runs on your device.
Halftone and Dither Effect gives a photo the look of print or early computers. Halftone redraws it as dots that grow with the darkness, in black or in the four printing inks (CMYK) at their classic screen angles. Dither reduces it to a few colors and spreads the tones with Floyd–Steinberg, Atkinson or an ordered Bayer pattern, with palettes from black and white to Game Boy green. Adjust the detail, brightness and contrast, then download a full-size PNG.
How to use Halftone and Dither Effect
- 1
Add your photo
Drop or choose a JPG, PNG, WebP, HEIC or TIFF.
- 2
Choose the look
Pick Halftone dots or Dither, then the colors, detail and contrast.
- 3
Download
Save the full-size result as a PNG.
What it does
- Real print screens
- CMYK dots at the 15°, 75°, 0° and 45° angles presses use.
- Classic dithering
- Floyd–Steinberg, Atkinson and ordered Bayer, with retro palettes.
- Full resolution
- The preview is quick; the download is made at full size.
Questions
What is the difference between halftone and dither?
Halftone prints tones as dots of different sizes on a regular grid, like a newspaper. Dither uses pixels of a few fixed colors and spreads them so the eye mixes them into in-between tones.
Which dithering method should I choose?
Floyd–Steinberg gives the smoothest tones. Atkinson, used on early Macs, has crisper highlights and shadows. Ordered (Bayer) makes a regular crosshatch pattern.
Why does the result look different when zoomed out?
Dots and dither patterns blend together at a distance; that's how they show tones. Fewer dots across, or a larger pixel size, keep the pattern visible.
Is my photo uploaded?
No. The effect is made on your device.