Texture-based Dither Matrices

Abstract

Continuous tone images must be halftoned to be displayed on binary output devices such as printers. Halftoning algorithms at low resolutions of the output hardware introduce textures into the resulting display. In this work we control halftoning texture by generating a threshold matrix from an image-based texture. We demonstrate that processing textures by the adaptive histogram equalization algorithm approximates pixel distribution properties of traditional dither screens. Ordered dithering with the resulting threshold matrix enables us to define texture in the halftoned image. We control the appearance of this texture by a combination of the ordered dither algorithm with an error diffusion process. We present applications of texture-based dither screens to both photorealistic and artistic rendering. In the case of photorealistic tone reproduction our technique preserves textures and edges of the original image. The ability to define an arbitrary texture enables us to introduce a variety of artistic effects, including embossing of images with textures and text, and approximation of the appearance of of conventional illustration media. We evaluate the resulting halftoning using multi-scale edge distortion measures. Our quantitative evaluation closely corresponds to the visual observations.