Photoshop hides halftone in a filter menu. Bitgrain is built around it, in your browser, with a free tier and one Pro plan.
Photoshop is the most capable image editor there is. Most people who open it for a halftone poster or a grainy cover use one filter and pay for the other thousand. Bitgrain is built for that one job.
| Capability | Bitgrain | Photoshop |
|---|---|---|
| Halftone | Built in, mono, color and CMYK with per-channel rotation | Color Halftone filter, limited control |
| Dithering | Every classic kernel, live preview, custom palettes | Only via index-color or export, no live control |
| Riso, ASCII, glitch | Built in, deterministic | Plugins or manual channel work |
| Generative AI | None, anywhere | Generative fill and AI features throughout |
| Your images leave your device | No, everything is local | Cloud features and sync enabled by default |
| Price | Free tier, then a monthly plan or one payment for 10 years | Monthly subscription only |
If you already pay for Photoshop and know it, its halftone and dither will do the job. Bitgrain is for adding the print look to an image without a full suite subscription or a hunt through filter menus.
No. Bitgrain imports flat images, RAW, HEIC and TIFF, not layered Photoshop documents. It is a finishing and effects tool, not a full retouching editor.
It is more controllable for this use. You get mono, color and CMYK separation with per-channel angle, cell size, and a live preview, rather than a single filter dialog.
No. The free tier exports at web resolution with a small watermark. Pro is a monthly plan you can cancel any time, or a one-time payment that covers 10 years.