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Distortionary

Filter 02 · Pattern dithering · 0.1 beta

Dithertastical

Halftones in any shape you like.

Classic dithering, then a pattern stage that redraws the image in tiled shapes: dots, lines, hexagons, stars, crosshatch and brick. Ink coverage follows the tone whatever the shape, so a star screen reads as cleanly as a dot screen, with crisp or soft edges.

Try it on your photo Buy from $19

Beta pricing, locked in once you buy.

  • GIMP 3
  • Photoshop
  • Desktop app
  • Command line · Enterprise
A turkey vulture’s head redrawn as a black-and-white newspaper halftone.
Before After
Turkey vulture. The halftone preset: black dots on white at 45°. 
$ dithertastical vulture.png -p halftone

The command that rendered it. Command-line tools come with Enterprise.

Try it live

The real filter, compiled to WebAssembly. Nothing leaves your browser.

Photograph

Your image stays on your machine. The filter runs here, in WebAssembly.

Preset
8 px
45°

How it works

6 steps, each doing one thing.

  1. 01

    Input

    The photograph, with an optional vignette toward black or white, placed and shaped by center, window and gamma.

  2. 02

    Dither

    Six classic error-diffusion methods, Floyd–Steinberg and Atkinson among them, or Bayer ordered dithering, to any number of levels, in one tone or per color channel. 1,2

  3. 03

    Pattern

    The image is redrawn as a grid of shapes, rotated, stretched, staggered or mirrored. Each shape is balanced so a given tone gets the same amount of ink whether it is drawn in dots, stars or bricks.

  4. 04

    Distort

    Four optional warps bend the pattern: by the image’s own brightness, around a center point (bulge, pinch, swirl), along a wave, or with random plasma. 3

  5. 05

    Ink

    Tone and pattern combine in several ways, from the classic halftone to outlines only. Edges come out clean at any size, or as soft as you like. 4

  6. 06

    Grunge and color

    Optional stains, speckle, scratches and cracks laid over the result, then a color ramp from ink to paper.

Specimens

Every image here is a built-in preset run on the same photograph, unchanged.

The vulture as fine engraved lines.
Before After
engraving: fine lines that swell in the shadows.
The vulture as soft plum and amber dots.
Before After
soft-poster: plum shadows, amber highlights.
The vulture screened in separate red, green and blue dots.
Before After
rgb-screen: each channel on its own angle.
The vulture drawn with gold stars on navy.
Before After
stars: gold on midnight, soft-edged.
The vulture in rippled lines.
Before After
waves: thick where the image is dark.
The vulture in navy and cream hexagons.
Before After
honeycomb: hex-packed, navy and cream.
The vulture as graph-paper lines.
Before After
grid: lines that thicken into the shadows.
The vulture as thin rings.
Before After
outline: only the edges of the dots.
The vulture in one-bit Atkinson dithering.
Before After
Atkinson error diffusion, one bit, no pattern.
A flamingo as a newspaper halftone.
Before After
Flamingo, halftone.
A flamingo as soft plum and amber dots.
Before After
Flamingo, soft-poster.
The vulture in one-bit Bayer ordered dithering.
Before After
Bayer 8×8 ordered dither, one bit.

Parameters

Every control, named.

The same names in every host and in the JSON presets. With an Enterprise license, the command-line tool reads those presets and runs them on a thousand files.

Name Range Effect
dither 10 methods Error diffusion or ordered dithering, or none.
shape 20 shapes dot, line, hexagon, star, heart, wave, crosshatch, brick-wall …
cellSize pixels Cell width. Line networks want 32 px or more.
angle degrees Pattern rotation, clockwise.
equalize on · off Keep ink coverage true to the tone, whatever the shape.
combine add · multiply · min · max · difference How tone and pattern meet.
threshold midpoint, width, easing Hard or soft cut. Width 0 is a hard edge.
distort luminance · center · sine · plasma Bends the pattern.

Hosts

GIMP 3
A native GIMP 3 plug-in written in C, with the filter linked in statically. GIMP 3.0 or later, Linux and Windows.
Photoshop
A UXP panel running the filter as WebAssembly. Photoshop 2024 (25.0) or later, macOS and Windows.
Desktop app
Distortionary for the desktop: open, adjust with a live preview, export. Linux and Windows; macOS later.
Command line
Enterprise only. The same filter as a command-line tool, for batches, build scripts and render farms. Settings load from JSON presets.

Built on

  • Floyd and Steinberg (1976)

    An adaptive algorithm for spatial greyscale.

  • Bayer (1973)

    An optimum method for two-level rendition of continuous-tone pictures.

  • Ottosson (2020)

    OKLab, the perceptual color space the tone and color steps work in.

Notes

  1. 1

    Jarvis, Judice and Ninke (1976). A survey of techniques for the display of continuous tone pictures on bilevel displays. Computer Graphics and Image Processing 5(1).

  2. 2

    Stucki (1981). MECCA: a multiple-error correction computation algorithm for bi-level image hardcopy reproduction. IBM Research Report RZ1060.

  3. 3

    Fournier, Fussell and Carpenter (1982). Computer rendering of stochastic models. Communications of the ACM 25(6). The plasma.

  4. 4

    Crow (1977). The aliasing problem in computer-generated shaded images. Communications of the ACM 20(11).

Pricing

Dithertastical alone, or the whole set.

Dithertastical

$19 $29 at 1.0

One filter in GIMP and Photoshop, one user.

  • GIMP 3 plug-in (Linux and Windows)
  • Photoshop panel (2024 or later, macOS and Windows)
  • Updates for the 1.x line
Buy

Complete set

Recommended

$49 $89 at 1.0

All four filters in GIMP and Photoshop, plus the desktop app. One user.

  • Bloomifier, Dithertastical, Grungetyper, Octodoctor
  • Distortionary desktop (Linux, Windows; macOS when ready)
  • Every GIMP plug-in and Photoshop panel
  • New filters added to the set during beta, at no charge
Buy

Studio

$199 $349 at 1.0

The complete set for up to ten seats in one organization.

  • Everything in the complete set
  • Ten named or floating seats
  • Invoice on request
Buy

Enterprise

Call for details

The command-line tools and libraries, for pipelines, servers and products of your own.

  • Everything in the complete set
  • Command-line tools for every filter
  • Rust libraries, C API and WebAssembly builds
  • Batch, server and render-farm use

Priced per organization.

Contact us

Beta prices. A license bought now stays valid through 1.x, and you never pay the difference.

The other filters

Bloom and glare

Bloomifier

Glow that follows the eye, not a blur slider.

Distressed type

Grungetyper

Type that wears like the real thing.

Masks

Octodoctor

Masks from gradients and keys, snapped to edges.