Make a photo look like newsprint

The halftone dot screen: an image rebuilt from variable-size dots, like a newspaper photo seen up close.

Tools used in this guide

The job

Newspaper photos print as a grid of dots — bigger dots for dark areas, tiny ones for light. The halftone converter recreates that screen digitally: each cell of the image becomes a dot whose area matches the average brightness beneath it.

Setting the screen

Choose an image, set the cell size and screen angle, and apply. Cell size controls how coarse the dots look; the angle tilts the dot grid — 45° is the classic print angle and hides moiré best.

Small cells (4–6 px): fine, close to the original. Large cells (12–20 px): obvious dot texture.
Invert swaps black-for-white — light dots on dark, like a white-on-black print.
Output is opaque black-and-white PNG at the input size.

Where it stops

It produces a monochrome screen — for a coloured or two-ink effect, run it through the duotone tool afterwards. Very small cells on a huge image make big files; the output is PNG so it stays sharp. Input up to 25 MiB.