Comment by enriquto
5 years ago
> I'm also really curious what contexts this has been most successful in. E.g. was it used for dithering in images or games back in the 1990's when we were limited to 16-bit or 256-bit color? Or is this something more recently explored in academia or in some niche imaging applications?
No need to speak in the past tense! It is not a "niche" application, either. Think about it: gray ink is almost never used. All printing into paper is done by dithering black ink into white paper. This includes bank notes, passports, product labels, etc. Besides dithering being used everywhere, it is a very active area of research, both in academia and in industry. In my lab we have seen a few industrial projects concerning dithering. It's a vast and very beautiful subject.
> do you have any links to examples?
Take a look here for a couple of examples: http://gabarro.org/ccn/linear_dithering.html
Huh, to be honest I feel like I've only ever seen halftoning when printing onto paper -- I've never associated dithering with printing at all.
And the "linear dithering" you're describing, when I think of images in certain banknotes and passports or quality seals that I'd call "engraved", I've always assumed were hand-drawn by an artist.
But I like what you're describing and linking to, as a way to achieve that hand-drawn effect algorithmically, to include a directional texture element! Thanks for sharing.
> Huh, to be honest I feel like I've only ever seen halftoning when printing onto paper -- I've never associated dithering with printing at all.
Yep, sorry about my sloppy terminology. I always use "halftoning" and "dithering" interchangeably. Yet, notice that today's printers are often matrix-based, i.e., like a high-resolution binary screen, with a bit of ink smearing depending on the type of paper/plastic.
> I've always assumed were hand-drawn by an artist.
Maybe some are still drawn by hand, but most printed stuff is at some point dithered automatically (and a lot of critical information can be embedded on the dithering patterns).