A downloadable tool

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This package contains common dithering patterns and brushes, created for Photoshop CS5 and later.

November 2021 NOTE: To fix pressure sensitive brushes on new PS versions:
Enable spacing in Brush Tip Shape and set it to a low value to make it work. I might update the brushes to reflect this later. 

There is some logic in the design of these brushes. Which shows you that most dithers are made from others of lower density, and have the inverse of themselves. This will make sense when you see the names of the patterns and brushes.

Download from abductedPlatypus.itch.io, where I will also upload updated versions of this package.

Make note that to make good dithered art you should not rely on purely these brushes. It is mainly intended for quick 'n dirty pixel art, that should be fine grained after your initial dithering. E.g. the 0.250 Alt patterns do not align well with the ABC pattern, however the 0.250 OA pattern amplifies (one kind of aliasing) itself. Also not all shifts are within this package (and brushes are not the solution for that either).*

A tip to help you with avoiding annoyances is to assign to each color either to OABC or DEFG brushes, this will make it easier to make dither with 3 or more colours.*

* If you don't understand this text, please tryout the Brushes a bit first, it should make sense after trying them out for a bit.

Setup Photoshop
Make sure you disable anti-aliasing for your tools (checkboxes and dropdown for fonts). In preferences set your grid size to 16 with 4 sub-divisions or 1 with 1 sub-division and use pixels for all measures. And always use anti-aliasing. (This page seems to explain setting it up well.)

Also checkout this if you need "simple" dithering for backgrounds.


Change Log

11/04/2017

  • Added Pressure Sensitive brushes for Wacom painting
  • Added the brushes beyond 0.500 that are present in the Pressure Sensitive brushes

Download

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Click download now to get access to the following files:

Dither Brushes.zip 79 kB

Comments

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I tried to import these into Clip Studio Paint, but there were some... Issues.


I had anti-aliasing turned off, and it still turned out like this. This isn't how it's supposed to look is it...??

This is amazing I'm so excited to try it out! Great idea thank you for making it <3

Thanks for the reply. Hope it helps!

You're a lifesaver, this saved me SO much time.  Thank you so much!

Great to hear :)

Oh my GOD these are exactly what I was looking for! I've spent so long trying to find some half-decent dither brushes and they were right here all along. Thank you so much for uploading these, enjoy the donation

Much appreciated! <3

(1 edit)

Thanks for all support and even donations! I really makes my day every time I check. :D

If you have any ideas to improve these brushes let me know as a comment on this post, and I will check out how I can get it to work and make it as a brush in Photoshop!

P.S. I made a short blog post about dithering and how this tool works.

http://abductedplatypus.com/to...

Can you make a version for GIMP?

I haven't used that in years. A quick google told me that it  should work out-of-the-box?

But since I am an open-source developer I would support the idea of getting it to work in GIMP, I might give it a look in the next week, if I can find the time.

Since I use the Texture mode for these Brushes, which is not supported in GIMP. Importing into GIMP nor recreating will work.  Since I packed the used patterns with it you could import and use those with the Clone tool in GIMP with alignment set to Aligned or None, depending on your needs.  (This also works in Photoshop with the Pattern Stamp with aligned turned on/off). Then use (layer) blending (e.g. Darken) and opacity options to change the color. This does not allow pressure sensitivity in the way I have set it up in Photoshop and is far from ideal since you would need to use blend mode to get it right.

This is all I can give you to make your dithering easier in GIMP until Texture is possible on brushes in the same way as it is in Photoshop.

I hope it might help!