Whether you are a web designer, graphic artist or even an electronic musician, dithering plays an essential role in the creative process. Dithering in image processing is a technique used to simulate colors or shadows.

The basic concept behind dithering is adding noise, or extra pixels, to a digital file. In graphics, dithering adds random patterns of pixels to improve image quality and prevent banding.

Often forgotten, one of the earliest uses of dithering was in World War II for bomb trajectories and navigation. That use is very different from dithering as we know it today.

Dithering is widely used in printing for both newspapers and comic books, but it only really became popular with the advent of the World Wide Web.