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Image Dither

Posted: Tue May 15, 2018 5:33 am
by Hydrops
Hello

can someone please explain to me what exactly is the image dither tool for ?

Thank you

Re: Image Dither

Posted: Tue May 15, 2018 2:23 pm
by Techgraphix
Let me explain what dithering is:
A laser fires or not.. this means that you can only engrave in black or white( or material color)
Maybe you have seen photo's in old newspapers. They where only printed in black. Grayscale was done with the ratio between black ink and paper. Less black means a lighter gray..
The laser works similar..
So if you want to laser a grayscal photo you have to convert it to pure black and white. this can be done by using a treshold. Lets say every gray above 60% bcomes black and every gray below 60% becomes white. the result is something like the wellknown Che Guevara image.
If you want more graytones you need to simulate a grayscale lik they did in the old newspapers.. This is called Dithering.
Normaly i use Photoshop to do this for me. the most commonley used dithering-methodes are Floyd-Steinberg and Stucki.
This dithering tool will tranform your grayscale image (8 or 16 bit grayscale or even a 64 bit color to a 1 bit black/white picture, ready to laser..
Kees

Re: Image Dither

Posted: Fri May 18, 2018 7:52 am
by Hydrops
Thank you very much Techgraphix, I do understand

So translating this into machine parameters, dithering on mine is 0.40, what does this mean exactly can you please explain ?

Thank you