ImageMagick Examples --
Ordered Dither Upgrade

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The following is a demonstration before and after results and IM Examples development examples of a new or exapnded aspect of ImageMagick.

During the creation of the IM Examples for Quantization and Dithering I saw an oppertunity to expand the ordered dither functionality to not only provide more ordered dither patterns, but also expand it to provide an ordered dithered posterization functionality.

That is, allow not only bitmap dithering, but dithering between multiple color levels as per the "-posterize" operator. See Posterize, recolor using primary colors for examples.

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Original Ordered Dither Threshold Maps

This is section is a reference and will not be updated.

This is what the IM "-ordered-dither" operator provided before the expandion of this operators functionality.

Note that ordered dither was able to, by default so a level 2 posterization of images. This will be the last time I look at this.

Notice that it only provided these three ordered dither patterns, and these patterns had to be specified as numbers, representing the patterns tile size.

Lets look at these patterns using gradients.

The extra '8x8' ordered dither pattern was an existing ordered dither function that was only linked into the "-ordered-dither" operator with IM v6.2.9-2, under my suggestion.

In version IM v6.2.8-6 some digital-halftone dither patterns was added by Glenn Randers-Pehrson.

Note the 'hack'-like nature using a 'x1' number to allow the addition of these dithering patterns.

Also note that at this time "-ordered-dither" and "-random-dither" operators were aliases for each other, which is why this restriction existed. But it also created a horrible 'fall-back' situation, in that if the arguments for "-ordered-dither" was wrong, IM would do a "-random-dither" using a very bad set of argument, rather than give the user an error.

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Ordered Dither Threshold Maps Expansion (and naming)

From IM v6.2.9-7, the above changed, to allow the use of more symbolic selection of the ordered dither threshold maps, with IM returning an error if no map was selected rather than falling back to the disasterious "-random-dither" operator.

First of all, all the threshold maps used for the ordered dither patterns were checked and updated to produce a better result for the specified style.

For example compare these new "-ordered-dither" threshold map results... ...to what the previous threshold maps produced...

As you can see the re-developed and checked threshold maps produce a distictly better diffused pixel dither pattern.

And here is the new expanded set of built-in ordered dither threshold map arguments, and the new names for selecting the threshold map to use.

That is, a total of 13 different types of threshold maps. Internally the code was designed to allow simple addition of more such maps in the future, and the development of the use of XML data file to read in such maps in a later stage.

Note the "checks" used to be called "2x1", as a halftone 2x2 pattern, however it is more than that. It represents the most minimal dither pattern posible, for all ordered dither patterns, one that only adds a single dither pattern between any two colors.

The "threshold" pattern is supplied as an equivelent to using a undithered "-posterize" operator, as well as a test map on the posterization aspects of the new "-ordered-dither" function. (See next section)

As part of backward compatibility, all the old '{number}x{number}' arguments have been made aliases to the appropriate 'named' threshold map above. They are now depreciated, but will always remain.

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Posterized Ordered Dither Expansion

The above consolidation of "-ordered-dither" code and the addition of the extra threshold mappings was not the primary purpose of the re-development of the operator.

With some initial 'proof of concept' work using the "-fx" operator (see below), I wanted to provide a ordered dithering between multiple levels of colors (as per the "-posterize").

WHY? Because then you can generate a more deterministic dithering of images than you can achieve with 'error correction dithering'. This is especially important for color reductions involving animations as you will not get problems from color differences between frames.

The posterization level is added to "-ordered-dither" argument using commas, making this addition backward compatible with previous usage of the operator.

For example 'checks,6' will use a classic "web-safe" color map (see the "netscape:" built-in), but add one extra pseudo-level of color dithering the 'checks' dither map between each level. In other words even though only 6 levels of color per channel is being used (producing 6^3 or 216 colors) the single dither pattern between levels increases the dither to and effective 11 levels (producing and effective 11^3 or 1331 colors).

In this I plan to implement the extra levels with the following proprieties.

• What channels are operated on is controlled by the "-channels" setting.
• A single number is for all channels. EG: '6' for the "web-safe colormap".
• Multiple numbers allows you to use different level counts for each channel. EG: '8,8,4' will implement a '332' ordered dithered colormap.
• If no numbers are given, fall back to a 2 level bitmap dither.
• A value of zero disables posterization of that color channel.

For example, here is the same gray scale gradient first dithered using a 6 grey levels. Compare that to the original gradient...

As you can see even though only 6 colors are used, with ordered dithering you increase the effective number of colors used to define the gradient, to a point where you can be hard pressed to notice just how few colors were used!

Not only can you define the number of posterization levels for all channels, but you can specify the levels for each channel (as specified in "-channels". For example, here we dithered the gradient using a special 332 color map (8 levels or red and green, 4 of blue) which defines a total of 256 colors.

Because of the different number of color levels per channel, the above image is not made up of pure grey colors, but includes some bluish and yellowish pixels which cancels each other out to produce extra levels of greys.

Now compare a 'error correction dithered' posterization, with an 'ordered dithered' posterization of the IM logo at level 2, and level 6.

Each set of images use the same set of colors, the first pair using the simple threshold set of 8 colors, with the second using the 6 level 'web-safe' color map. The first image in each pair is pseudo-randomly 'error correction' dithered, the second is ordered dithered.

That means if a small change occurs the first will have almost the whole pattern of dithered colors within the image will change, while the second will only be modified wherever it was actually changed. In other words an ordered dithered posterization is much better for animations, that rely on finding the areas of change in images to reduce the overall animation size.

The 'error correction dithered' version however is generally regarded as better as it is more 'correct' color wise, and there is less patterns to attract the eye.

Also at this time you can not use ordered dithering between a random set of colors as you can with an 'error correction dither', but only between mathematically determined 'posterized' colors.

Here is the logo ordered dithered against a '332' colormap magick logo.png -ordered-dither o8x8,8,8,4 logo_o8x8_332.gif

The '332' colormap (8 levels of red and green, 4 levels of blue) is regarded as probably the best posterize colormap for a 256 color limit image. The off difference in channel levels producing a slightly better shading of colors for this cartoon like image.

Unfortunately this is not currently reproducible using the error correction dithered "-posterize" operator.

It was to produce this color map that the expansion of the "-ordered-dither" operator, included the ability to specify separate levels for each color channel.

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XML data source for threshold maps

This was a final addition to the Ordered Dither Upgrade, and combined with a revisement of all the XML data handling within IM by Cristy.

With this development you can now use a "-list threshold" command to see exactly what maps are available to the "-ordered-dither" operator. as well as use personal "threshold.xml" data files to define your own maps.

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DIY New Othered-Dither Replacement

This is provided as a reference to the source and prototyping of the new posterized form of ordered dither functionality that was shown above.

As part of using ImageMagick for my own images, I wanted to be able to design and use my own ordered dither patterns. As such I figured out a equivalent ordered dither method using the extremely slow "-fx" operator.

For example (repeat of DIY Horizontal Dither)...

Here I created another set of dither pattern images, specifically to produce a interesting shadow shading effect.

And here I apply it to generate a shadow pattern.

Now I converted Multi-Image Dither patterns, into and ordered dither threshold map. Though this only works properly for complete sets of ordered dithered images.

Which can be applied using "-fx".

Now we can dither our images using, just a single image, and a much simpler threshold comparison for each pixel rather than multiple images.

And an example of applying this map.

magick logo.png \ dmap_o2x2.png -virtual-pixel tile -fx 'u>=v' \ diy_map_o2x2.gif

These were then expanded into posterized forms.

And here I apply it to each color channel of IM logo test image. magick logo.png \ dpat_o2x2x6.gif -virtual-pixel tile -fx 'u[floor(21*u)+1]' \ diy_ordered_2x2x6.gif

And finally I created a posterized form of ordered dither using a single binary threshold map.

It is the mathematics developed for this final, posterization ordered dither from a single threshold map, that was encoded to produce the new OrderedPosterizeImage(), function defined above.