I will never, ever stop loving Bill Atkinson’s dithering algorithm. If you cut your teeth on Macpaint or Hypercard, you probably recognize it without even realizing it.

There’s a great post for the supernerds in the room that goes into the nature of “dithering” and even explains the algorithmic nudges Atkinson Dithering uses to achieve its distinctive look: https://surma.dev/things/ditherpunk/

These days, dithering is usually encountered as an affectation or an artifact; we’ve got ridiculously high res deep color displays on our *wrists*. Back in the 80s when Atkinson was doing some of his most memorable work, though, it was the cutting edge of image display optimization.

Ditherpunk — The article I wish I had about monochrome image dithering — surma.dev

I always loved the visual aesthetic of dithering but never knew how it’s done. So I did some research. This article may contain traces of nostalgia and none of Lena.

@eaton you say that but, laser printers! For which there might well be epic algos, but they’re not used by our printer bought a year ago where the dithering _sucks_, unless you’re looking for massive “it’s like pop art!” structured dots on anything slightly grey.