HyperDither
Introduction
HyperDither is an OS X image processing utility that converts color or grayscale images to 1 bit black & white using a sophisticated dithering routine. Specifically, HyperDither implements the Atkinson dithering filter.
Way back in the early days of Macintosh, Bill Atkinson (of HyperCard, QuickDraw, MacPaint & nature photography fame) developed a very elegant dithering filter to convert greyscale image data to the 1 bit black & white Mac video display. The dithering produced by this routine was much higher quality than the now-a-days ubiquitous Floyd-Steinberg or “Error-diffusion” filter (used by QuickTime, PhotoShop).
The dither matrix was implemented an option in Apple’s HyperScan software (A HyperCard stack with some XCMDs/XFCNs) that would connect to a flatbed scanner. HyperScan, and hence the most-excellent Atkinson dithering routine, has been unavailable for many, many years—but not forgotten! I was able to email Bill Atkinson in January, 2003 and inquire about the details of the algorithm; he was kind enough to respond with a brief write up of the routine—15 minutes later I had it up and running.
It’s taken a few spare afternoons since 2003 to pack everything into a nice little application with documentation and an icon—better late than never!
Usage
To process an image with HyperDither, just drag & drop or copy & paste the image into the HyperDither’s main window. You can then save it to disk or copy it back to the clipboard.
Pricing
The cost of HyperDither is $0.00.
System Requirements
HyperDither was developed on OS X 10.4.7—earlier versions back to 10.1 should work, but have not been tested.
Examples
Sample output appears at the bottom of this page. A comparison of HyperDither versus PhotoShop dithering is available here.
The types of images that tend to look best have high-contrast. Incidentally, the original implementation of the algorithm intentionally increased the contrast of the final images (they were also faster to compute by doing so). HyperDither gives you the option of choosing between high-contrast and no-contrast adjust, as well as adding a sharpening pass.
Download
HyperDither_1_0_1.zip (1.34Mb)
HyperDither is an OS X image processing utility that converts color or grayscale images to 1 bit black & white using a sophisticated dithering routine. Specifically, HyperDither implements the Atkinson dithering filter.
Way back in the early days of Macintosh, Bill Atkinson (of HyperCard, QuickDraw, MacPaint & nature photography fame) developed a very elegant dithering filter to convert greyscale image data to the 1 bit black & white Mac video display. The dithering produced by this routine was much higher quality than the now-a-days ubiquitous Floyd-Steinberg or “Error-diffusion” filter (used by QuickTime, PhotoShop).
The dither matrix was implemented an option in Apple’s HyperScan software (A HyperCard stack with some XCMDs/XFCNs) that would connect to a flatbed scanner. HyperScan, and hence the most-excellent Atkinson dithering routine, has been unavailable for many, many years—but not forgotten! I was able to email Bill Atkinson in January, 2003 and inquire about the details of the algorithm; he was kind enough to respond with a brief write up of the routine—15 minutes later I had it up and running.
It’s taken a few spare afternoons since 2003 to pack everything into a nice little application with documentation and an icon—better late than never!
Usage
To process an image with HyperDither, just drag & drop or copy & paste the image into the HyperDither’s main window. You can then save it to disk or copy it back to the clipboard.
Pricing
The cost of HyperDither is $0.00.
System Requirements
HyperDither was developed on OS X 10.4.7—earlier versions back to 10.1 should work, but have not been tested.
Examples
Sample output appears at the bottom of this page. A comparison of HyperDither versus PhotoShop dithering is available here.
The types of images that tend to look best have high-contrast. Incidentally, the original implementation of the algorithm intentionally increased the contrast of the final images (they were also faster to compute by doing so). HyperDither gives you the option of choosing between high-contrast and no-contrast adjust, as well as adding a sharpening pass.
Download
HyperDither_1_0_1.zip (1.34Mb)
Comments
so no, not working for either of you
so just from the HyperDither website or in general? I've hotlinked images here in the past so is this a new lawrule here?
go ahead and hotlink, i do it daily
oh,
use <del> instead of <s> now ;)germanstupid of me. Sorryja!yes!this means i need to add a sad smilie now, and maybe a lederhosen one too...
ok, that might make it in... lol