Blog

A few little tweaks:

• Settings are now automatically stored in the URL, so you can bookmark/share specific configuations
• "Copy settings" is not needed anymore since you can just grab the URL from the url bar...it is replaced with "clear all" since reloading the page no longer resets everything.
• Download and Download All now open a dialog with the available formats and file sizes instead of a small dropdown, which mostly allows me to put a little "support" prompt to encourage donations ;)

A user wrote in to suggest that the right sidebar was too cluttered...and I guess I think I agree. I cleaned it up and things are looking better! Removing the modals for feedback and newsletter sign-up might end up reducing the volume of feedback (moderate) and newsletter sign-ups (meager), but I can always add them back if need be. Will try out this more streamlined version for now.

I also took the opporunity to do a bunch of other minor UI improvements. The main one being that on smaller screens (laptops and such), the main image should be larger which I think will be much more usable.

That's three updates in a week? Make the madness end.

Back so soon? After I removed the pixeliness option I heard from a few users that they use it regularly and could I put it back? Yes, I could put it back and did so. And while I was in there I did a few other updates:

New Knoll dither mode

I guess this is what Photoshop used to use for Dithering? It is similar to Bayer but supposed to be better because it determines the colors first and then applies them using whatever "pattern" you want (bayer grids or blue noise)?

New Color selection method

When you choose the "Original (from image)" palette option you can now choose between a few different options for how to determine the image's palette: Popularity, K-means, and Median. Brief descriptions are in the tooltip. And palette generation was actually the last thing that the site was using the RGBQuant library for, so goodbye RGBQuant, thanks for getting us this far, and thanks to Leon Sorokin for writing it.

Please let me know how you like the new functionality. Thanks!

Fixed a bunch of little things, bug fixes and stuff. The most noticable thing will be that the default starter images are all different now, and hopefully better! We will see.

• New default example images covering photos, transparent PNGs, and animated GIFs
• Fixed wrong-color "blobs" that could bleed out of areas your palette can't reproduce when using error diffusion
• Large images are now automatically scaled down on upload instead of being rejected, and files up to 100 MB are supported
• A loading spinner now shows while large images are being added and analyzed, so the app doesnt just seem to be hanging
• The Pixeliness option is hidden for now, I think it is just overly confusing and not very good
• Removed the performance benchmark page, which no one even knew existed. Need to make this better

Thanks,
Alex

Dizzy Dither

A Dither it! user contacted us to request the addition of a new error diffusion algorithm called Dizzy Dither, created by Liam Appelbe. In addition to the blog post above there is a great youtube video that walks through what the algorithm does. The short version is that instead of pixel by pixel left to right, top to bottom, it goes to pixels in a random order which avoids some of the banding, bars, patterns, etc that standard error diffusion can produce. Watch the video and test out the "Dizzy" option under error diffusion algorithms.

Partial PNG Transparency

We implemented functionality to preserve partial alpha transparency on PNGs when using error diffusion. Not much else to say here.

Animated GIF fix

There was a kind of confusing bug in which certain animated gifs, depending on how they were encoded, would only have transparency applied to the first frame. But, I think its fixed? Not positive. Let me know if you continue to have any issues with animated gif transparency.

That's it for now, keep the bugs and feature requests coming!

Hello,

I got a few requests for some new features, which should be implemented now:

1. The new version has had a pattern where images are re-dithered everytime a setting is changed. This is nice because you get instant feedback to a change, and it feels snappy and responsive. The downside is that if you are working with larger images, or know exactly what settings you want to change, it adds extra time while you wait for each change to trigger a re-dither. So, there is now an option to toggle back on the old basic workflow of making changes to the configuration and then clicking "Dither it!" to run them all at once. This is off by default, but can be change in the new "Settings" tab..and your preference should persisnt between sessions.
2. There is a new "Settings" drawer. There were enough little options accumulating where I decided to clean up the main sidebar by moving it all to a dedicated "settings" area. This is stuff that you probably want to set and forget, and not necessarily need access to as regularly as some of the main configuration options.
3. I re-did some structuraly UI stuff such as moving all of the non-dithering related stuff (newsletter, blog, etc) over to the right sidebar and made the left sidebar a "floating" control panel thing. More like the original v2 layout. I don't love how busy the right sidebar is now, maybe ill trim some of it down in the future.
4. Fixed a bug with transparent animated gifs. Transparency was working, animated gifs were working..and now they are working together, harmoniously.

As always, please feel free to send me feature requests, bugs, share what you are working on, etc.

Thanks,
Alex

Welcome to the third complete re-write (season?) of Dither it!, v3. Since first launching the site in 2018 I have enjoyed learning about dithering, improving my design and coding skills, trying out stupid stuff, and most importantly seeing what everyone has made with it (only when it was sent to me, I can't see anything otherwise). Y'all are making a lot of cool stuff. I hope that this new version continues to allow and enhance this wide variety of craft and expression.

The new version includes some cool new features, and some new features that are maybe not that cool? Not sure. Anyways here is a little list of some highlights:

• New dither modes (blue noise, riemersa, simple 2d, more Bayer sizes)
• Improved pixel scale functionality
• Animated gifs!
• Saving palettes
• Adjustable-size image based palettes
• This blog
• Hopefully much better mobile experience
• I forget what else

Please kick the tires, let me know what bugs you find or what potential improvements you notice, and feel free to share what you are working on with me. I have an idea for a community showcase, which might be the next thing I work on.

Thanks,
Alex