Ditherpunker

This is an image editing software which aims to turns regular photos into ditherpunk illustrations.

What is ditherpunk?

Ditherpunk is a pixel art style which is charactized by low number of colors (often 1-bit, black & white) making the use of dithering necessary to create the illusion of shading. There are a couple of indie games making fantastic use of this aesthetic, like Return of the Obra Dinn and Critters for Sale.

How to use this

This repo doesn't have a release yet, just install the rust toolchain, use your favourite shell, and:

cargo run -- input/file/path.png output/file/path.png path_to_config.json

NOTE: currently only PNG format is available as output, regardless of what extension you use in your path.

Config file:

The program needs a config file to know how to edit your images:

{
  "processing_width": 300, // max width at which all the processing is done (ratio is preserved)
  "processing_height": 300, // max height at which all the processing is done (ratio is preserved)
  "brigthness_delta": 30, // increase/decrease brightness before dithering
  "constrast_delta": 30, // increase/decrease contrast before dithering
  "dithering_type": "blue_noise", // the dithering technique used, see list
  "color_map": [ // optional field: custom list of colors used for dithering,  (default is black and white)
    {
      "color": "#101010", // color in hex, the '#' at the beggining is optional
      "magnitude": 0.8 // optional field: affects the amount of color used
    },
    {
      "color": "0000aa", // doesn't matter if the letters are in uppercase or lowercase
      "offset": 0.15, // optional field: bias for lighter/darker color
      "magnitude": 0.85 
    },
    {
      "color": "10F022",
      "offset": 0.50,
      "magnitude": 0.5
    },
    "f0f0f0" // shorthand for when not using offset or magnitude
  ],
  "output_scale": 4 // scale the image before writing it (done to preserve the pixel effect)
}

List of dithering techniques

• rand - pure randomness, works better with bigger processing sizes
• bayer_0 - Bayer(0) 2x2 matrix, clear patterns
• bayer_1 - Bayer(1) 4x4 matrix, clear patterns
• bayer_2 - Bayer(2) 8x8 matrix, can leave some unpleasing artefacts on the image
• bayer_3 - Bayer(3) 16x16 matrix, can leave some unpleasing artefacts on the image
• blue_noise - uses a pre-computed 128x128 blue noise texture
• atkinson - error-diffusion with the Atkinson matrix (NOT IMPLEMENTED)
• jarvis - error-diffusion with the Jarvis-Judice-Ninke matrix (NOT IMPLEMENTED)
• floyd - error-diffusion with the Floyd-Steinberg matrix (NOT IMPLEMENTED)