# Dithering (ディザリング)

> Dithering suggests unavailable intermediate colors by spatially mixing pixels from a limited palette; ordered matrices or error diffusion make both tone and a distinctive granular surface.

- IndexStyle No.585 — https://indexstyle.org/styles/dithering
- Kind: Technique · Family: Digital Image Techniques · Era: 1960s–
- Mood: Technique, Nostalgia, Play
- What this family collects: Each brings the smallest units of an image, or the machinery of its compression, to the surface, so coarseness and breakdown count as method instead of defect.

## Defining characteristics

- Two or more pixel colors mixed as checks or grain
- High-frequency dots spreading around tonal boundaries
- Apparent gradients made from a fixed palette
- A pattern up close that becomes an intermediate color at normal distance

## Best used for

- Preserving photographic tone on low-color displays and e-paper
- Using the grain of early computer images as deliberate digital material

## Composition recipe

- Typography & lettering: Use bitmap or simple sans type that remains intact at low resolution.
- Layout & structure: Build broad tonal fields but control diffusion around contours and copy.
- Material & texture: Fix the palette first, then pass quantization error to neighboring pixels or place dots with a threshold matrix.

## Colour

Read off the reference works below, so a direction rather than a fixed palette.

- Ground: #F2F0E8
- The colour it is remembered by: #6E65A8
- Text and outlines: #141414

## What to avoid

Adding monochrome noise is not dithering. The limited colors must approximate the source value.

## Application checklist

Work through this before calling a piece an application of this style.

- [ ] Visible in the piece: Two or more pixel colors mixed as checks or grain
- [ ] Visible in the piece: High-frequency dots spreading around tonal boundaries
- [ ] Visible in the piece: Apparent gradients made from a fixed palette
- [ ] Visible in the piece: A pattern up close that becomes an intermediate color at normal distance
- [ ] The layout follows: Build broad tonal fields but control diffusion around contours and copy.
- [ ] The lettering follows: Use bitmap or simple sans type that remains intact at low resolution.
- [ ] The material and surface follow: Fix the palette first, then pass quantization error to neighboring pixels or place dots with a threshold matrix.
- [ ] The colour relation holds: #F2F0E8 as ground, #6E65A8 carrying the style, #141414 for text and outlines
- [ ] At least one reference work below has been studied directly
- [ ] The caution above ("What to avoid") has been addressed

## Related styles

- **Pixel Art (ピクセルアート)** — Treats the pixel as an honest unit, building clear form from limited resolution and palette. → https://indexstyle.org/styles/pixel-art
- **Halftone (ハーフトーン（網点）)** — Halftone converts continuous tone into regularly spaced dots of changing size so it can be printed; from a distance they return to tone, while enlargement reveals the screen as material. → https://indexstyle.org/styles/halftone

## Compose it with something else

The dictionary can put this entry in a structural role and another in an accent role, and report where the two fight: https://indexstyle.org/compose?ids=dithering+pixel-art

## Further study

- Floyd-Steinberg error diffusion
- Ordered dithering
- Limited color displays

## Reference works

- Floyd and Steinberg — An Adaptive Algorithm for Spatial Greyscale — https://isgwww.cs.uni-magdeburg.de/~stefans/npr/entry-Floyd-1976-AAS.html

## AI interpretation

An AI-generated interpretation image exists for browsing convenience only — it is not a reference work: https://indexstyle.org/ai/dithering.jpg

## Source of record

- Floyd and Steinberg — An Adaptive Algorithm for Spatial Greyscale — https://isgwww.cs.uni-magdeburg.de/~stefans/npr/entry-Floyd-1976-AAS.html

## Machine surfaces

- JSON: https://indexstyle.org/api/styles/dithering
- Image-generation prompt (legally clean): https://indexstyle.org/styles/dithering/prompt.txt
- MCP: https://indexstyle.org/mcp (tools: search_styles, get_style, compare_styles, compose_styles, find_related_styles; prompts: image-prompt, apply-style)