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Error diffusion

Atkinson dithering online

Bill Atkinson’s Macintosh dither passes on only three-quarters of the error. Edges get sharper, highlights blow out to white and shadows block up to black.

Good for the retro Mac look and quick plots.

Try Atkinson on your image → How Atkinson dithering works

How it decides

      #  1  1
   1  1  1
      1         ÷ 8, only 6/8 of the error is passed on

Chosen for its look, not its accuracy: fewer dots in the lights means fewer pen marks and a faster plot.

Atkinson dithering applied to a photo of a lion
Slide to compare. A 0.7 mm cell on A5 with perceptual tone: 29,472 marks. Photo: Lion, Andreas Vonlanthen, 2025, Unsplash License.

Try it live

This runs in your browser. Change the algorithm, the number of cells or the threshold, or put a second algorithm next to it.

Atkinson

Rendered in 0.0 ms on your machine. Every dot here is what a pen or laser would put down.

All algorithms

Every one is an option in the Dither style: dither an image online and export a 1-bit PNG for a laser or SVG dots for a plotter.