Dither

The first thing you choose. The mode at the top decides everything about how Ditheron treats your image.

Dither Mode

Four ways to render. Each one is a different relationship between the dither and your footage.

Reactive Modern

The dither is born from the image itself. Bright areas, dark areas, edges, movement — the pattern responds to all of it. Nothing is overlaid. The texture emerges from what's already there.

This is where structures like Liquid, Cells, Grid, Lattice, and Glyphs live. Each one reshapes the dithering into something that feels alive and tied to your content. The image doesn't wear the dither. The image becomes it.

See Modulation for the full set of structure and motion controls.

Order

Classical dithering. A pattern is applied across the frame regardless of what's underneath. Clean, predictable, and endlessly useful. This is where the 69 algorithms across eight families live — from error diffusion to space-filling curves to things that don't have names yet.

Order mode is the foundation. If you're after a specific pixel art texture, a print technique, or a clean geometric reduction, start here.

Reactive Retro

Same structures as Reactive Modern, but with a different engine underneath. Where Modern flows, Retro resists. The carrier signal fights back against the image. Brighter areas push harder. The result has a raw, electronic quality — like analog equipment trying to hold a signal it wasn't built for.

Retro adds its own set of controls: Trail Length, Frequency Modulation, Exponential Curve, Highlight Resistance, and Current Isolation. These shape the energy and behavior of the carrier.

See Modulation for the Retro engine controls.

Signal

A different beast entirely. Signal doesn't dither your image — it displaces it. Scanlines carry pixel data forward (or backward) based on brightness, and the result is a kind of controlled smearing that sits somewhere between glitch art and oscilloscope output.

Four engines (Square, Bi, Edge, Sound), each with its own displacement character. Echo controls let you stack up to four decay trails. Direction, orientation, color scheme, frequency, curve — all tunable. Animate the Speed parameter and the image starts to pour.

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Controls

These controls apply across all modes.

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Algorithm Families

These families are active in Order mode. Each one contains a set of algorithms with a shared visual character.

Scatteral

13 algorithms that produce organic, film-like texture. Ranges from smooth and natural to grainy and raw.

Grid

14 algorithms. Clean, geometric, and scalable. From tight checkerboards to invisible film-grain noise. Includes variants designed for flicker-free video.

Pathfinder

6 algorithms that produce textures that look organic, hand-drawn, or almost biological. Spend time here.

Modu

6 algorithms. Halftones, crosshatching, wave patterns, and direction-aware effects. Think printmaking, engraving, and analog broadcast.

Creative

7 stylized effects that go beyond traditional dithering. CRT emulation, scan lines, plasma, and flickering patterns with extra perceived depth.

Glitch

9 algorithms that are intentionally broken. Digital artifacts as aesthetic. If it looks like your footage got corrupted in the best possible way, it's probably in here.

Print

8 algorithms inspired by physical printing and engraving techniques. These produce the kind of tangible, tactile texture you'd see in letterpress, copperplate etching, newspaper print, and industrial screen printing.

Glyph

6 algorithms that replace the dither pattern with characters. Your image rendered in text.

Tips

• Reactive Modern is the default for a reason. Start there and switch to Order when you want something more controlled
• Reactive Retro with high Current Isolation produces patterns that move independently of your footage. Pure electronic texture
• Signal with the Sound engine and all four Echoes turned up creates cascading displacement trails. Animate Speed for movement
• Start with Grid family in Order mode for clean, classic pixel art looks
• Scatteral at Scale 1 produces beautiful, nearly invisible film-grain texture
• Pathfinder produces textures that feel alive. Spend time here
• Reactivity makes the dither pattern follow your image. Try it on high-contrast footage
• Per-Channel Dither adds subtle color fringing. Pair with Color Depth 3+ for best results
• Just experiment. Cycle through algorithms with the same settings and watch how drastically the look changes. Combine with Randomize to stumble into something unexpected