The printer’s screen in every form: offset dot, Ben-Day, engraving, error diffusion, Bayer, noise.
Formerly Dotraster
Puncta
Puncta — Halftone effect, Ben-Day dots, engraving and dithering
AM · Euclidean dot · 45°
01 What it is
From the morning paper to the 1984 Macintosh.
Every grey becomes a proportion of black. Puncta decides how: dots that swell in the shadows, engraving lines, error carried from one pixel to the next, a matrix that orders the dots, or noise.
For print, comics, screen printing, stamps, laser engraving, pixel art — and every image that wants to look printed.
6screen families
26error diffusions
21matrices
135patterns
02 What it can do
01
AM, the offset dot
The round dot that turns square at 50 %: the magazine dot. Shape, 0.1 to 600 lpi, angle, grid or Ben-Day layout.
AM · Euclidean dot · 45°
Red Ben-Day · duotone
02
Ben-Day
The staggered dots of comics, in one ink or four. Lichtenstein had a stencil; here the size follows the modelling.
Engraving · lines at 30°
03
Engraving
Lines whose weight follows the image: intaglio, burin, banknote.
Atkinson · Mac 1984
04
Diffusion and matrices
Floyd-Steinberg, Atkinson, Riemersma, Bayer, blue noise: photos in black and white pixels, from faithful archive to Game Boy screen.
02.1 How to get there
Videos recorded before the renaming: at the top of the screen, Puncta is still called Dotraster. What’s new →
00:00:00
01
David, red Ben-Day
Leafing through presets until the right one, refining, then moving in to see the dots.
00:00:00
02
The offset dot, by hand
No preset: classic rendering, a huge dot to read its shape, 45°, then tightening down to the portrait.
Next mode
03 Linea →