Atkinson Dither
Bill Atkinson devised this error-diffusion variant for the original Macintosh in the mid-1980s. It discards a quarter of the error, giving high-contrast, clean-looking black and white images with crisp highlights.
Spot it
- 01Crisp 1-bit contrast
- 02Clean white highlights
- 03Sparse light stipple
Why it happens
Like other error diffusion, but only three-quarters of each pixel's rounding error is spread, to six neighbours, so shadows and highlights clip to pure black and white.
Recreate it in Pixio
Image edit prompt“Render this image as an Atkinson dither in the style of early Macintosh graphics: pure black and white pixels only, high contrast with blown-out clean white highlights and solid black shadows, delicate scattered dots in midtones, crisp square pixels. Keep the original subject and composition.”
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