Dither
- dithering
- 1 bit
- bayer dither
- ordered dither
A gradient faked with a regular pattern of two-colour dots, because the palette has no in-between.
Opens an image model with the prompt in it. The price is on the page before you sign in.
What it is for
A display with two colours and no grey has to fake every tone in between, and the fix was to alternate the two in a pattern the eye averages. The constraint produced a texture nobody designed, which is exactly why it reads as honest and why it came back.
How it works
Only two colours exist. Tone is faked by how densely they alternate, following a fixed repeating grid rather than random placement. Every edge is a hard pixel boundary with no anti-aliasing. The pattern stays visible rather than dissolving into an average.
When to use it
Use it for anything about computing, constraint or nostalgia, and for work that has to print in one colour. Avoid it where the picture will be scaled down, because the pattern collapses into flat grey.
Told apart from its neighbours
Grainy Gradient uses random noise rather than an ordered grid. Screentone is a physical sheet cut by hand. Halftone Newsprint is a press reproducing a photograph.
- Grainy Gradient
- Screentone
- Halftone Newsprint
Where it is used
It suits a zine, an album cover, a game asset and any picture that should look like it came off an old machine.
- Early computer displays and games
- Zines, editorial and music artwork
The prompt
Replace the blanks with your own character, keep the rest. Then run it on an image model.
<character> rendered with dithering, every gradient faked with a regular repeating pattern of small dots in only two colours because no third colour exists, the pattern getting denser as the tone darkens and sparser as it lightens, a strict ordered grid rather than random scatter, hard pixel edges everywhere with no anti-aliasing, black and white only or two flat colours only, the dot pattern clearly visible at full size
What goes wrong
A noisy grainy image comes back. Ask for an ordered repeating pattern in exactly two colours, with hard pixel edges and no anti-aliasing anywhere.
Leave out
a third colour, anti-aliasing, smooth blending, random noise, grey tone, soft edges
Watch for
Ordered, not random. Dither is a pattern a machine repeats, and asking for random noise gives grain instead, which is a completely different look with a completely different history.
Questions
Draw it
Pay for the one run. No subscription, and the price is on the model page before you sign in.
