Every pixel becomes pure black or pure white, with dithering to keep the shading. Made for e-ink screens, thermal printers, laser engraving and 1-bit art.
Open the editor with this effect
A 1-bit image has exactly two colours. Every pixel is on or off, black or white, with nothing in between. It sounds limiting, but plenty of hardware still wants exactly that: e-ink screens, receipt and label printers, laser engravers, small OLED displays and some screen printing workflows. It is also a look in its own right, sharp and graphic, and a staple of indie games and zines.
The simplest conversion is a threshold. Pick a brightness level, and everything lighter becomes white while everything darker becomes black. It is clean and bold, but it throws away all the shading, so faces turn into flat shapes.
Dithering keeps the shading. Instead of one hard cut, it arranges black and white pixels so that, from a normal distance, the eye reads them as greys.
Use a threshold for logos, text and line art. Use dithering for photos and anything with soft light.
Stucki, the method used on this page, spreads the error over a wide area. It gives smooth tones with very little visible pattern, a good default for photos.
Atkinson gives brighter highlights and stronger blacks. It is a good fit for small screens, where a busy grain would turn to mush.
Bayer ordered dithering gives a regular grid. It survives laser engraving and screen printing well, because the dots are evenly spaced.
Thermal printers tend to blur neighbouring dots together, so a slightly lower resolution and a little extra contrast usually print better.
Open the editor from this page and drop in your image. It is already converted to black and white with a Stucki dither.
Set the resolution to match where it is going. For a device with a fixed screen, export at that screen's size so one pixel in the file is one pixel on the screen.
Try a few methods in the dither panel and keep the one that holds the most detail for your subject.
Export PNG. The file contains only black and white, ready for the printer, the screen or the next step in your project.
Every pixel in the export is pure black or pure white. It is saved as a standard PNG, which most devices and tools read directly. If your hardware needs a special bitmap format, convert the PNG with the tool that ships with it.
Yes. Pick any two colour palette, or a palette like Game Boy for four tones. The image is dithered between those colours instead.
Many people use dithered images for engraving photos onto wood or slate. Ordered dithering and Atkinson usually burn more cleanly than very fine diffusion grain.