Choose a dithering mode for your bead pattern

Dithering is a tradeoff, not a quality slider. It scatters two or more bead colors so they read as a third color from a distance. That can save a sunset or wreck a sprite. This guide helps you pick None, Floyd-Steinberg, Atkinson, or Ordered Bayer by source and by what you see in the preview.

If you have not made a pattern yet, start with Create your first RetroBeads pattern. For the full Photo route, see Convert a photo into a bead pattern; for sprites and pixel sources, see Turn pixel art into a bead pattern. This guide is the canonical home for the dithering decision itself.

A short, practical history of dithering

The idea behind dithering is older than digital art. Long before software filters, makers and printers used small neighboring marks of a few solid colors to suggest extra tones at distance. When color screens, early game consoles, and limited print palettes arrived, the same trick became standard: a checker of two colors looks like a third color when you back away from it.

Bead charts have the same constraint. The chart can only use real beads you can buy, and the eye blends adjacent beads at viewing distance. Dithering brings that old craft trick into the bead grid. It is popular with makers because it lets a small bead palette imitate the gradient in a photo, the soft shadow on a face, or the sky behind a subject, without buying every bead color in the world.

It is also easy to misuse. Dithering on a clean sprite turns deliberate art into bead noise. The rest of this guide is about when to reach for it and when to leave it alone.

What dithering does in a bead chart

A bead chart is solid colored cells on a grid. There is no blur, no anti-aliasing, no gradient. If the source needs a color that is not in the palette, the wizard has two basic moves:

Snap every cell to its nearest palette color. Clean and predictable, but smooth areas can show hard color bands.
Scatter two or more nearby palette colors in a small pattern so the average reads as the missing color. That is dithering.

Close up Speckle is visible bead by bead.

From a step back Speckle reads as a smoother gradient.

Judge dithering at the distance the finished piece will hang or sit. A patch that looks busy nose-to-the-screen often reads as a clean gradient from across the room.

Up close, a dithered patch looks like separate beads. From a step back, those beads visually blend. That is the whole game: judge dithering at the distance the finished piece will hang, not nose-to-the-screen.

When to leave dithering off

For these sources, None is almost always the right answer:

Native pixel art, sprites, and sprite-sheet frames where each visible pixel should be one bead.
Upscaled pixel art with a clean grid factor.
Logos, icons, text, and flat brand colors.
Hard-edge line art and two-tone stickers.
Small projects where every bead is already a big visible decision.

In all of these, the source already picked its palette deliberately. Scattering colors on top reads as bead noise, not as smoothness. The pixel-art guide is the right home for these workflows; this guide just confirms the default.

When to try dithering

For these sources, dithering is worth trying:

Real photographs with gradients, skin tones, sky, or shadow.
Soft illustrations and painted artwork.
Large pieces viewed from across a room, where the eye does the blending for you.
Any chart where the palette is much smaller than the source’s color range and flat areas show stair-step bands.

The classic case is a face on a small palette. Without dither, cheeks step from one skin tone to the next in clear stripes. With dither, the same beads scatter into a softer transition that reads as a continuous tone from a few steps back.

Pick a mode by visible symptom

The four selectable modes look different in the preview. RetroBeads product RetroBeads dithering options The current Advanced conversion Dithering options are Auto, None, Floyd-Steinberg, Atkinson, and Ordered Bayer. Auto is explained separately because it resolves to one of the visual modes. Here is how to read them.

None Hard bands of color where one bead snaps to the next.

Floyd-Steinberg Scattered speckles. Reads smoother from a step back.

Atkinson Sparser speckles. Keeps highlights and shadows open and crisp.

Ordered Bayer Regular crosshatch texture. Predictable but visible up close.

Dithering trades smoothness up close for distance-readable detail. Without it, the chart shows hard color bands. Floyd-Steinberg breaks those bands into scattered beads that blend at arm's length. Atkinson keeps the speckle sparser so highlights and shadows stay open and crisp. Ordered Bayer adds a regular texture that some makers like and some find busy.

None

Every cell snaps to its nearest palette bead. No scattering.

Use it for pixel art, logos, text, hard-edge line art, flat brand colors, and small projects where every bead matters.
Visible symptom that says it is right: the chart looks like the source. Edges are clean. Flat areas stay flat.
Visible symptom that says it is wrong: smooth areas of the source (sky, skin, shadow) collapse into hard color bands.

Floyd-Steinberg

Scatters substitute beads across the chart so the average matches the source.

Use it for photos, gradients, skin, sky, and soft illustrations on a small palette.
Visible symptom that says it is right: smooth areas read as a continuous tone from a step back, with no obvious banding.
Visible symptom that says it is wrong: flat areas of the source pick up a constant fine speckle that does not blend away at viewing distance, especially on small pieces.

Atkinson

A sparser scatter than Floyd-Steinberg. Keeps highlights and shadows more open and lets clean areas stay clean.

Use it for softer photo conversions where Floyd-Steinberg feels too busy, and for portraits where you want bright catchlights and dark shadows to stay punchy.
Visible symptom that says it is right: the chart looks calmer than Floyd-Steinberg, with cleaner highlights and shadows but still no hard bands.
Visible symptom that says it is wrong: mid-tones still show banding because the scatter is too light to break it up. Switch back to Floyd-Steinberg.

Ordered Bayer

Adds a regular crosshatch pattern of substitute beads instead of scattering them randomly.

Use it for intentional retro or print-style texture, abstract backgrounds, and pieces where you want the dither itself to be part of the look.
Visible symptom that says it is right: the crosshatch reads as a deliberate texture, not as a mistake.
Visible symptom that says it is wrong: the regular pattern fights the subject. Faces, soft skin, and organic shapes usually look better with Floyd-Steinberg or Atkinson.

What Auto actually picks

Auto is not a fifth visual mode. It is a default chooser. RetroBeads product RetroBeads dithering Auto defaults Auto resolves to None for sprite/pixel-art processing modes and to Floyd-Steinberg for Photo mode.

In Pixel art and Upscaled pixel art processing, Auto resolves to None. The wizard assumes the source’s palette is deliberate.
In Photo processing, Auto resolves to Floyd-Steinberg. The wizard assumes you want gradients to read smoothly at distance.

Leave Auto on for most projects. Override it only when the symptom in the preview tells you the default does not fit your source, using the mode descriptions above.

Palette and Max colors come first

Dithering covers gaps between source colors and palette beads. The size of that gap depends on the palette you chose and the Max colors setting in the editor’s Colors panel.

A larger, well-matched palette has smaller gaps to cover. Dithering becomes optional.
A small palette has larger gaps. Dithering becomes more useful, but a chart with fewer well-chosen beads often reads better than one with many near-duplicates.

If the chart looks busy after dithering, review Max colors before you blame the mode. Too many near-duplicate beads can create extra speckle; too few colors can create hard bands that no dither mode fully hides. For the full pre-build pass, see Fix the pattern before you build.

A short decision checklist

Name the source type. Pixel-style or photo-style? Pixel-style starts at None; photo-style starts at Floyd-Steinberg.
Check Max colors and palette first. If the chart uses too many similar beads or too few tones, fix that in the Colors panel before changing dithering.
Step back from the screen, or squint. Decide if the chart reads at viewing distance, not bead by bead.
Match symptom to mode. Hard bands -> try Floyd-Steinberg. Floyd-Steinberg looks too busy in highlights -> try Atkinson. Want a deliberate texture -> try Ordered Bayer. Speckle that will not blend at distance, or a clean pixel source -> use None.
Change one thing at a time. Switch Dithering, watch the preview, then decide.

What to do next

If you came from the Photo guide, switch back to Convert a photo into a bead pattern for the rest of the framing, color count, and cleanup decisions. If you came from the pixel guide, Turn pixel art into a bead pattern has the full Advanced cheat sheet for sprite sources. Once the chart looks right, Fix the pattern before you build runs the pre-build pass for halos, stray beads, color count, and board seams.