Halftone Generator
The screen a printer would use, with the dot shape, angle and frequency in your hands.
A halftone turns continuous tone into ink you can actually print: a grid of dots that grow and shrink so that, from a normal reading distance, the eye averages them back into a photograph. This tool builds that grid the way a press does — you choose the dot shape, the screen frequency, the angle and the arrangement, and a live preview shows the result at full resolution as you work. Dot area is what the eye integrates, so dot radius here follows the square root of the tone rather than the tone itself; that is the difference between shadows that hold detail and midtones that go muddy.
For color work you can separate into CMYK and set frequency and angle per channel, which is how a press keeps four screens from fighting each other. Output goes out as a raster or as real vector shapes — SVG or PDF, with crop marks and registration targets — so the dots stay dots at any size instead of becoming a picture of dots. As with every ProDesigner tool, your image is processed on your own device and nothing is uploaded unless you choose to save it to an account.
20 dot shapes, 12 arrangements
Circle, ellipse, square, diamond, line, cross, star, hexagon, euclidean dot and more, on grids from square and hexagonal through spiral and concentric rings.
Per-channel screen angles
Set frequency and angle independently for each CMYK channel, the way a press does, so the rosette falls where you intend rather than where it lands.
Vector dots, not a picture of dots
Export the shapes themselves as SVG or PDF with crop marks and registration targets — sharp at any output size, and editable in Illustrator or Affinity.
Dot gain compensation
Presses print dots fatter than you drew them. Compensate with a curve measured against the dot shape you actually chose, not against an idealised circle.
How to use it
- Start with a clean, high-contrast image A halftone throws tonal information away by design. A flat or hazy photo turns to mud; raise contrast and lift the highlights before you screen it.
- Pick the shape, then the frequency Shape sets the character — a round dot is neutral, an ellipse is gentler in the midtones, a line screen is unmistakably graphic. Frequency sets how fine it is, and your printing process caps that.
- Set the angle A single screen at 45° is the classic choice because the eye is least sensitive to diagonal patterns. For CMYK, offsetting each channel is what prevents a moiré.
- Export at the size you will print Screen frequency is a physical measurement. Export at the final dimensions, or the dots come out the wrong size for the press.
FAQ
What is a halftone?
A way of printing a photograph with a single solid ink. The image is broken into a grid of dots whose size varies with the tone — big dots in the shadows, small ones in the highlights — so that ink you can only lay down at full strength reads as a range of grays. Newspapers, comics and risograph prints all work this way.
What screen frequency should I use?
It depends on what you are printing on. Newsprint typically runs 65–100 lines per inch, coated stock 133–175, and risograph and screen printing usually want something much coarser — often 30–60 — because the process cannot hold a fine dot. If you are sending work to a shop, ask them; the frequency is the one setting where guessing costs you a reprint.
Can I export halftones as vector?
Yes. The dots can be written out as real SVG or PDF shapes rather than as a rasterized image of them, so they stay crisp at any size and can be edited in a vector program. That also means dot gain compensation is applied to the geometry rather than to pixels.