Suppose a dispersed-dot dither matrix is treated as a
collection of numbers, each number having a position in space;
when the numbers are visited in increasing order, what is the distance
in space between pairs of consecutive numbers visited? In
Bayer’s matrices, this distance is always large. We hypothesize that
this large consecutive distance is important for good dispersed-dot
threshold matrices. To study the hypothesis, matrices that have this
quality were generated by solving a more general problem: given an
arbitrary set of points on the plane, sort them into a list where consecutive
points are far apart. Our solution colors the nearestneighbor
graph, hierarchically. The method does reproduce Bayer’s
dispersed-dot dither matrices under some settings and, furthermore,
can produce matrices of arbitrary dimensions. Multiple similar matrices
can be created to minimize repetitive artifacts that plague Bayer
dither while retaining its parallelizability. The method can also be
used for halftoning with points on a hexagonal grid, or even randomly
placed points. It can also be applied to artistic dithering,
which creates a dither matrix from a motif image. Unlike in the artistic
dither method of Ostromoukhov and Hersch, the motif image can
be arbitrary and need not be specially constructed.
This paper presents a generalization of dispersed-dot dithering.
While existing methods such as Bayer's assume that color dots are
arranged in a square matrix, this method works with arbitrarily-placed color points. To create a good dither pattern for arbitrarily-placed points, they must be ordered so that consecutive pairs are maximally
separated. In this paper, the ordering is obtained by hierarchically
coloring the vertices of the points' adjacency graph. Each level in
the coloring hierarchy adds a color digit to each graph vertex's
label, and sorting the resulting multi-digit labels produces the
desired consecutive-point separation. The method can reproduce Bayer's dispersed-dot dither matrices, but can also produce many similar matrices. Multiple matrices can be used to minimize repetitive artifacts that plague Bayer dither, while retaining its parallelizability. The method can also be applied to artistic dithering: given a repeatable motif image, its pixels can be grouped into subsets, one for each gray level, and each subset ordered. Concatenating the subsets yields a dither matrix that reproduces a motif while displaying an overall image. Unlike in previous artistic dither methods, the motif image can be arbitrary, and need not be specially constructed.
Access to the requested content is limited to institutions that have purchased or subscribe to SPIE eBooks.
You are receiving this notice because your organization may not have SPIE eBooks access.*
*Shibboleth/Open Athens users─please
sign in
to access your institution's subscriptions.
To obtain this item, you may purchase the complete book in print or electronic format on
SPIE.org.
INSTITUTIONAL Select your institution to access the SPIE Digital Library.
PERSONAL Sign in with your SPIE account to access your personal subscriptions or to use specific features such as save to my library, sign up for alerts, save searches, etc.