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Experiments in dithering

Passengers waiting for a yellow train in snowy winter.

The eastbound Kate Shelley 400 arriving at DeKalb in December 1964. Photo by Roger Puta. The file is a compressed webp with 75% quality, and a width of 700px.

Passengers waiting for a yellow train in snowy winter, rendered in low resolution with dark, light, and yellow dots.

Dithering this image with 3 colors at a width of 350 px reduced file size from 30 kB to 7 kB.

The side of a vine-covered house with a spiral staircase, obscured by vegetation.

A vine covered house. Photo by me. The file is a compressed webp with 75% quality, and a width of 700px.

The side of a vine-covered house with a spiral staircase, obscured by vegetation, rendered in low resolution with dark, light, orange, and green dots.

Dithering this image with 4 colors at a width of 350 px reduced file size from 84 kB to 16 kB.

Common kestrel and black-shouldered kite.

The Kestrel and the Kite. Photos by Jakub Hałun and Charles J. Sharp. The file is a compressed webp with 75% quality, and a width of 700px.

Common kestrel and black-shouldered kite, rendered in low resolution with dark, light, and yellow dots.

Dithering this image with 3 colors at a width of 350 px reduced file size from 17 kB to 9 kB.

You can also apply cool effects. Here I’ve dimmed the dark parts of the image and brightened the bright parts of the image progressively near the edges of the image. It helps the image blend into both light and dark backgrounds!

Passengers waiting for a yellow train in snowy winter, rendered in low resolution with dark, light, and yellow dots, fading at the edges.
The side of a vine-covered house with a spiral staircase, obscured by vegetation, rendered in low resolution with dark, light, orange, and green dots, fading at the edges.
Common kestrel and black-shouldered kite, rendered in low resolution with dark, light, and yellow dots, fading at the edges.