Shades of Halftone | Hacker News Reader

Shades of Halftone

blog.maximeheckel.com

130 pointssurprisetalk8 comments

Still going through the article but loving all the detail and interactive components! Nice writeup.

PS: worth mentioning the RGB to CMYK function credited to me is not my original work, I believe I got it off stack overflow or similar many years ago. A more robust way of doing this transformation would be with a color management system and profile, as it happens I’ve done a bit of work on that! [1] Used this here [2].

Transforming with ICC profile will give you a result that might be closer to how a screen printer would turn your digital image into a four colour print, but more advanced screen printing workflows these days tend to use “rip” software that handles many layers (eg: 12 colors instead of 4) and stochastic screening [3] which produces quite different results than what most halftone shaders are doing.

[1] https://github.com/mattdesl/lcms-wasm

[2] https://sierra.mattdesl.com/

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stochastic_screening

I drove a Scitex RIP (raster image processor) as my part time job in college. The CMYK (and if you were rich, N more spot colors) rotation degrees were held in religious fervor. Me: "These degrees seem random." Boss: "You are not to ever digress from those, they are the Only True Values" (and if you play with them in TFA you'll see it indeed becomes a moire mess with tiny tweaks, which would cost a ton in reprinting and delays).

It was mildly humorous that stochastic dithering (even with dot-gain compensation) was an option back in 1990, and produced much higher grade color reproductions, but clients wouldn't have any part of it, because it wasn't "the look" that I think they expect their readers expected.

This is an absolutely beautiful personal website. Go click around it, there's so many 'wow' moments. Go to the homepage (https://maximeheckel.com/) and then click 'about', the transition is :chefskiss:

The blog's design style reminds me a lot of Alex Harri's[1], who also does excellent work. I wonder if one influenced the other.

Edit: Oh the homepage has its inspirations actually listed. Harri isn't there.

1. https://alexharri.com/blog/planes

"Application error: a client-side exception has occurred while loading maximeheckel.com (see the browser console for more information)." is an odd way to introduce yourself as a frontend developer though.

Yes! I bookmarked this site as soon as I saw the design and typography. It’s that good.

Fantastic article! I went down this same rabbit hole in 2011 and built a shader for my iOS app called "Halftone." It took the CMYK route and included factors like ink bleed, paper texture, etc. It was the whole reason for the app! Yet...I received constant e-mail from users who asked "how do I remove the dots?"

I have been recently exploring halftones, pixels and dithering and I am so happy came across your article! What fun interactive components and the little sounds while interacting was such a gentle surprise. Heading back to your website to read more and soak in the beautiful design!

Stellar work. Combination of good design and good engineering really shines here.

This must have taken ages to produce. Thank you for it!

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