Image Halftone Generator (Newspaper Dot Effect)

How to use

1. Upload an image — JPG, PNG, WebP, anything the browser can decode.
2. Pick a preset (Newspaper, Fine poster, Coarse poster, Comic) or fine-tune cell size (3–32 px), angle (0–90°) and dot shape.
3. Recolor foreground and background — black-on-cream for newsprint, blue-on-yellow for retro comic, etc.
4. Adjust contrast to push midtones lighter or darker before halftoning, then download as PNG.

Frequently asked questions

Why 45° as the default angle?

For a single-ink halftone, 45° hides the grid most effectively from the human visual system — horizontal and vertical lines are easier to spot, so rotating the screen by 45° makes the dots read as 'texture' rather than 'rows'. In four-color process work, each plate gets a different angle (commonly C=15°, M=75°, Y=0°, K=45°) so the four screens don't overlap and form a moiré pattern.

What's the difference between halftone and dithering?

Halftone uses a regular grid and varies the SIZE of each dot to encode tone — a deterministic, periodic pattern. Dithering (Floyd-Steinberg, Atkinson, Bayer etc.) keeps the dot size constant and varies the DENSITY by distributing quantization error — an irregular, stochastic-looking pattern. Halftone looks like a print, dither looks like an old display or a screenshot from a 1-bit game.

Why don't square / diamond / line shapes look exactly like classic halftone?

Classic AM (amplitude-modulated) halftone uses round or elliptical dots because they tile cleanly and resist dot-gain unevenly. Squares, diamonds and lines are stylistic choices — lines at 0° give a venetian-blind / comic-book Ben-Day effect, diamonds give an art-deco look, squares pixel-y / Lichtenstein-y. None of them are how a real press actually screens an image, but they're useful design tools.

Can I do a real CMYK 4-color halftone?

Not in this tool — that needs four separate screens at different angles overlaid with multiplicative ink blending, and accurate output requires an ICC profile and a press calibrated to specific dot gain. For digital effects this single-screen monochrome / duotone version is plenty; for actual print, use Photoshop's Color Halftone filter or your RIP software.

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