Every dot saved as a real vector shape, so it stays sharp at any size and opens in Illustrator, Inkscape, Affinity or Figma.
Open the editor with this effect
A PNG halftone is a grid of pixels. Scale it up and the dot edges go soft, recolour it and you are fighting anti aliasing. A vector halftone stores each dot as a shape with a position and a size, so it stays sharp at any size, takes a new colour in one click, and goes straight into Illustrator, Inkscape, Affinity, Figma, a vinyl cutter or a laser engraver.
Every dot in the screen becomes its own vector mark, traced from your photo, not a picture of dots wrapped in an SVG. Dots of the same size and colour are grouped together, which keeps big files manageable.
A mono halftone exports in a single colour. The Colour style keeps each dot in the colour of the image under it. The CMYK style exports four screens, one per ink, each at its own angle and blended the way inks overlap on paper.
Turn on Transparent background and the paper rectangle is left out, so the dots sit on nothing and drop straight onto a shirt mockup, a poster layout or a cutting mat.
Each dot is drawn as a very short stroke with a round or square end. Browsers, Illustrator, Inkscape, Affinity and Figma all show this correctly. Some cutters, engravers and RIPs only work with filled shapes, so if yours ignores strokes, run Outline Stroke in Illustrator or Stroke to Path in Inkscape first.
Dot count adds up fast. A fine screen on a big photo can mean hundreds of thousands of dots, which some software opens slowly. For cutting, weeding or engraving, use a bigger dot size: fewer, larger dots cut cleaner and weed in a fraction of the time.
Vinyl in particular needs generous dots. Anything much under 2 or 3 millimetres across on the finished piece is a pain to weed.
Round is the classic print dot and the safest for cutting and engraving, because it has no thin points.
Ellipse dots chain together in the midtones for smoother gradients. Square and diamond dots look bolder and more graphic. The line screen turns the photo into rows of lines of changing thickness, which looks like an engraving and suits laser work very well.
Angle changes the feel as much as the shape. 45 degrees hides the grid best, 0 degrees looks deliberately mechanical.
Vectors have no DPI, so you can scale the SVG to any size. What stays fixed is the number of dots. The file keeps the same rows of dots whether you print it as a sticker or a banner, so pick the dot size for the size you will view it at.
For print, think in lines per inch: the number of dot rows across divided by the printed width in inches. Bitgrain fits up to 600 rows across the long edge of a photo.
Open the editor from this page. A mono halftone is already on the sample, so drop in your own photo.
Set Style, Dot size and Contrast in the halftone panel, then Angle, Shape and Sharpness under Advanced. Change the Page colour in the Colour tab if you want light dots on a dark ground.
Keep halftone as the last effect and leave LUTs off, since SVG export traces the halftone itself. You can still adjust tone and add effects before it.
Open Export. If you only want the dots, turn on Transparent background in the Image tab, then switch to Other formats and choose SVG.
The halftone itself is free to use and preview, and you can download the sample photo as an SVG to see exactly what you get. Exporting your own images as SVG is part of Pro, which starts at $6.99 a month.
Only halftone and ASCII looks export as true vectors. Make sure halftone is the last effect in your stack and that no LUT is applied, then try again.
Yes. Each dot is a short stroke with a round or square end. If a cutter or engraver needs filled shapes, use Outline Stroke in Illustrator or Stroke to Path in Inkscape.
Yes. A coarse round or line screen works best. Engrave a small test first, since how dark the dots burn depends on the material and your power settings.
No. The dots come from a classical halftone screen worked out from the brightness of your photo. Nothing is traced by a model and nothing is uploaded.