I'm not sure I'd call Atkinson Dither "sophisticated" (the author does). In fact it's a mathematical error that happens to look very cool on certain material.
Sadly, the effect falls apart when scaled. You can craft a beautiful Atkinson dithered vibey image but you pretty much can't deliver it. Text it, put it on a web page, drop it into iMessage, Skype it -- nobody just delivers bits any more. It looks particularly awful when not at 100% zoom.
Also the page's comparisons to Photoshop are misleading because you can do a Atkinson dither in Photoshop by setting the "Dither" slider to 75%. You'll probably find it looks better at 87.5% which throws away 1/8 of the error instead versus his 1/4.
While I realize this violates the "if it's new to you..." rule, Atkinson dither has long since been strip-mined to the bone for blog posts and karma. Flickr did it as an April Fool's joke years ago. Frankly if there's a graphics tool that doesn't support it I'd be surprised.
This particular one seems to look pretty good when the pixel size is relatively large, but would give an inferior result compared to some of the others listed above for higher dpi. Also, it's too bad he didn't just disclose the specific details of the algorithm.
And you totally missed the point.
Yes, you can probably use these tools to get the same result but the first two are not GUI tools and the third is a kitchen sink included behemoth of a program.
What Lobo_tuerto asked is:
Is there a similar tool that does this one thing and does it well and in a friendly manner available for Linux based operating systems?
>What Lobo_tuerto asked is: Is there a similar tool that does this one thing and does it well and in a friendly manner available for Linux based operating systems?
No, he merely asked if there was "anything like this".
The extra constraints about being GUI, having the same one-task feature set, friendliness, are all your additions.
So, it's hardly the parent who "totally missed the point". At least he made a suggestion that would help the person get an Atkinson dither done.
Yes, "anything like this"... TFA links to a simple, one-step app that converts an image to a one-bit black and white image using a particular dithering technique. Commenter wanted to know if such a simple "do one thing well" app actually exists. I think neither of you read the article at all, and based your replies solely on the content of other replies, and if that's the case, it's exceedingly unfair to the poor guy who just wanted a command line dithering app.
>Yes, "anything like this"... TFA links to a simple, one-step app that converts an image to a one-bit black and white image using a particular dithering technique.
And instead of the "converts an image to a one-bit black and white image using a particular dithering technique" part (which is the whole point), some seem to be bizarrely focused on the "simple, one-step app" -- losing the forest for the tree.
>Commenter wanted to know if such a simple "do one thing well" app actually exists.
Commenter wanted to know if any similar thing exists in Linux, for which the obvious deduction would be "something to produce the same results", NOT something necessarily structured as a "do one thing well" app. It would thus be cool if a suggestion also matched that, but still OK if it didn't.
>I think neither of you read the article at all, and based your replies solely on the content of other replies, and if that's the case, it's exceedingly unfair to the poor guy who just wanted a command line dithering app.
First of all, there's no article. It's an app presentation page on John's website (for which I've been a fan for years, and follow his watercolor like apps and other generated painting experiments).
Also, who said that the commenter "just wanted a command line dithering app" or that he would take offense if some GUI app were suggested?
He asked for "anything like this for Linux" -- and "this" happens to a GUI app. How can you miss that and still accuse others of not reading the page?
Maybe stop second-guessing the guy and offending the parent that tried to help with his suggestions?
Parent never said it has to be a CLI app, and he never said it has to be a "single purpose tool" either. And neither "anything" nor "like" imply that the Linux app should fit very specific criteria. The most obvious way to read what he said as it stands now is as asking people to suggest Linux apps to achieve the same results.
Besides there's nothing impolite, much less "exceedingly unfair" (!), about a person trying to be helpful and suggesting several apps that do/might do the same task -- even if they also do another 10 or 100 things.
Since 'like' is very vague, the original answer would probably have been fine if it had left off the 'take your pick' bit. That makes it seem confrontational for reasons that are hard to divine due to its terseness.
Maybe they thought everyone should already know about these tools? Maybe they felt Linux was being unfairly attacked. Maybe they were just in a hurry and weren't thinking about how their commment might be recieved
How does 'take your pick' "makes it seem confrontational"?
It just means "use whatever you think works best for you" of these.
>Maybe they thought everyone should already know about these tools? Maybe they felt Linux was being unfairly attacked. Maybe they were just in a hurry and weren't thinking about how their commment might be recieved
Maybe people are overthinking and extracting intends where there were none?
Sadly, the effect falls apart when scaled. You can craft a beautiful Atkinson dithered vibey image but you pretty much can't deliver it. Text it, put it on a web page, drop it into iMessage, Skype it -- nobody just delivers bits any more. It looks particularly awful when not at 100% zoom.
Also the page's comparisons to Photoshop are misleading because you can do a Atkinson dither in Photoshop by setting the "Dither" slider to 75%. You'll probably find it looks better at 87.5% which throws away 1/8 of the error instead versus his 1/4.
While I realize this violates the "if it's new to you..." rule, Atkinson dither has long since been strip-mined to the bone for blog posts and karma. Flickr did it as an April Fool's joke years ago. Frankly if there's a graphics tool that doesn't support it I'd be surprised.