How to dither?
Printed From: Pixel Joint
Category: The Lounge
Forum Name: Resources and Support
Forum Discription: Help your fellow pixel artists out with links to good tutorials, other forums, software, fonts, etc. Bugs and support issues should go here as well.
URL: https://pixeljoint.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=18901
Printed Date: 13 September 2025 at 5:59pm
Topic: How to dither?
Posted By: CyanideKoolaid
Subject: How to dither?
Date Posted: 18 May 2014 at 1:30pm
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Okay, I get the basics of dithering. However I also wonder if dithering by hand is the preferred method? Some pictures have an extreme amount of dithering in them, and I think it would be pretty brutal to do it all by hand. This weeks challenge has many examples due to the very limited color palette, large chunks of many pictures are dithered in a perfect pattern. There are other methods to do this quickly, but I was wondering if that breaks it being "pixel art" even if the result is the same? Just wondering how I should approach my dithering in the future. For small sections I've always just done it by hand, but for doing areas as large as in some of those pictures I'd have a hard time and it would take me forever when I could create a pattern and copy/paste it or use a layer with a dithered pattern and only apply it to areas where I want that dithering. Are those methods okay to use in pixel art? |
Replies:
Posted By: Hapiel
Date Posted: 18 May 2014 at 1:40pm
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Nothing breaks it being pixel art, as long as you are in full control of the outcome. My favorite method is copy + paste. More important than the question 'how to dither?' is 'why to dither?'. ------------- |
Posted By: CyanideKoolaid
Date Posted: 18 May 2014 at 4:06pm
| Thats very true! It's really why I asked. I am new to pixel art and want to explore different parts of it, but would prefer to learn the methods commonly used by other pixel artists so I understand how to execute them as I explore using them. |
Posted By: neota
Date Posted: 21 May 2014 at 8:22pm
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Sounds like you are not using a program that has features to help you dither. GrafX2 and ProMotion both support this. In Grafx2, you can access the feature via FX->Sieve. Here's something I threw together in a few minutes using Contour Fill, Sieve, and a few different brush sizes.  I wouldn't have any problem considering that pixel art, however rushed it is. This type of method is commonly used by pixel artists who choose to do a lot of dithering. It's really quite easy, and you still have the opportunity to adjust things exactly as you want them. The only reason why you might avoid this type of method is if your dithering is irregular/ 'stylistic' (like http://www.pixeljoint.com/pixelart/17613.htm - this , for example). But you're talking about perfect patterns, so that shouldn't be relevant for now. EDIT: You can use various other related methods (for example, in Photoshop or GIMP, you can clone from a pattern or layer), but be aware that this is more cumbersome -- you have to update the source pattern any time you want to change dithering color, as opposed to simply changing the pen color (in Grafx2 or ProMotion). Programs that -explicitly- support pixel dithering are the most comfortable to work with. Copy+Paste is basically the desperation method.. I would not use it unless forced to, as it's quite repetitive and cumbersome. At smaller sizes it's often more troublesome than simply plotting the individual pixels. In response to the question of 'why to dither': You can think of the more 'generic' perfect patterns as a type of airbrush tool, which should inform you that you are best off using this in lower-detail areas, where smoothness is more important than crispness. Less generic patterns can also add texture / stylistic elements. ------------- absolutely. |
Posted By: CyanideKoolaid
Date Posted: 22 May 2014 at 6:42am
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Sounds fine. I use Photoshop mainly and there's a variety of ways to dither, but I wasn't sure using them would be accepted. You can do stylistic dithering quite easily in Photoshop too. There's a few different methods to use, some listed here: http://wayofthepixel.net/index.php?topic=9977.0 - http://wayofthepixel.net/index.php?topic=9977.0 That's just two of the ways, I use the layer method because I'm comfortable with it but the brush technique looks pretty simple too. I just made the topic because all of the methods use a lot of "tricks" that make me think of CG instead of pixel art. I agree the end result is the same, wasn't sure how important people thought the "process" of pure hand pixeling was. |
Posted By: neota
Date Posted: 22 May 2014 at 8:13pm
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Okay, different meaning for 'stylistic' dithering than I meant. You can definitely do any dither pattern you want using Photoshop or GIMP, but the type of stylistic dithering I mentioned cannot be done by a simple pattern, because it needs to adapt to its surroundings. Here is a quick example I whipped up:  A more involved example is ilkke's http://www.pixeljoint.com/pixelart/39713.htm - "Clockwork whistler" , which has both small-scale conventional dithering, and larger-scale stylistic dithering. There's not an absolute consensus, but mostly people are willing to agree that if you have control of every pixel, then it's pixel art. Since pattern fills and etc are fine, that boils down to 'stray/meaningless pixels are suspicious, don't leave stray pixels.' ------------- absolutely. |
Posted By: helcril
Date Posted: 23 May 2014 at 2:47am
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Originally posted by neota
elp you dither.GrafX2 and ProMotion both support this. In Grafx2, you can access the feature via FX->Sieve.Here's something I threw together in a few minutes using Contour Fill, Sieve, and a few different brush sizes. Can you explain what is Contour Fill in GrafX2 and how to use it? |
Posted By: neota
Date Posted: 23 May 2014 at 5:43am
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Contour fill is a mode of the normal freehand drawing tool. Instead of plotting the brush continuously as you move the mouse, it tracks the shape you draw, and when you release the mouse button, fills it. You can access it by rightclicking on the draw tool icon until it looks like a filled polygon. ------------- absolutely. |
Posted By: helcril
Date Posted: 23 May 2014 at 7:03am
Thank you very much! 
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