Ramblethread! A brainstorm approaches!

[Ryumaru]

While that may be true, banding is nothing more than an aesthetic pixel device that has generally been deemed unattractive which is what caused your assault against it in the first place. However, the 50% dither has been proven to be generally attractive. While attractiveness is a subjective thing, large general consensus can hold ground. It obviously took you up until now to discover that the 50% dither bands. Do you now find it less attractive than you used to? While you may not want to admit it I would bet that you do now that you have attached it to the connotation of banding. Your perception of an obviously unattractive element ( common banding) has muddied your perception of something much more harmless ( 50% dither).
Furthermore, I highly doubt that you always saw something slightly disturbing about the dither in the way one would about common banding. Explaining your epiphany as a " thought" shows ( to me, based on what I read) that it was not an aesthetic observation ( 50% dither is unattractive -> why? -> ah, I see, banding!) but ( banding is defined by these terms and has these characteristics -> so does 50% dither -> 50% dither is a form of banding!). In this way you are fixing a non-issue in terms of general aesthetic. If banding was attractive, would you be so quick to eradicate it?

Just as other people can band as they want, so can you avoid it- however id be hard pressed to believe that finding unattractiveness in the 50% dither would come to everyone given enough study of the pixel. While I am at a much lower place in the journey of the pixel than you, I can say I have attained a certain level where these higher pixel orders are not lost on me. I could of course be wrong in my statements as I am not in your head. Maybe you did always find the 50% dither unattractive, but it didn't stop you, or anyone else from using it. The same cannot be said about common banding. If you are trying to fix banding in terms of generally pleasing aesthetics, your quest ends before the 50% dither; if you are trying to fix banding as it's own issue as a characteristic in and of itself ( such as not using a certain color in an oil painting purely for personal reasons) then of course you are to continue.

I apologize if you didn't really want this much discussion on the issue ( or if we are just both at the point where we deem the other " wrong"- a horrible place to be in a discussion), especially since I have not been practicing the medium recently. I have not however, stopped thinking of the pixel- and banding was something I can distinctively remember trying to address in my work before you formed it's current definition and ways to avoid it- and I harken back to those experiences when discussing this. I could tell it was a problem before I knew what it was- and feel that a similar feeling would have existed with 50% dither if it was equally as displeasing as common banding.

[Atnas]

So here's a small selection of patterned dithers that do not contribute to banding. Easing from one to another is bound to prodouce some, but them the breaks.

Hmm, the middle patterns of each row appear to have visible rows, because they have no diagonal quality. The bottom left and top right and left are good. I'd hesitate to use the middle patterns instead of 50% though because it would introduce lines, or... bands... into my transition.

I'm wouldn't be too picky about it in my personal work though, and all are good patterns which I might use, I just don't think visible bands are any better than the super dense (to the point of negligible) banding that is 50% dither.

I think a cluster needs to have banding across a visible length to be considered banding. In the case of 50% dither the fact that the corners are touching doesn't make any one cluster look any more aligned than another, because the clusters are all single pixels and are as offset as possible at their density. Introducing gaps into the mix to try to separate the corners just introduces clusters and potential rows or columns which are worse bands than any 50% could ever be.

Granted, you're talking about the

corners in B, but if that middle line was only a pixel long it would just connect the two lines in the most efficient way possible, with a single pixel and I don't think that counts as banding in any sense I understand it. If the middle line was 2 pixels long then I'd say it was banding, but 50% isnt double pixels, it's as meshed and integrated as you can get. If it was 50% dither with doublewide pixels, yeah, that's banding. But not with squares.

Interesting stuff though and I kinda rambled without a solid point, but it's the ramblethread, right? Not discouraging the notions you're bringing up, just offering my own reaction to them. Whether I disagree with them or not is irrelevant, exploring pixels like this is EXCITING. :'D

[Helm]

It obviously took you up until now to discover that the 50% dither bands. Do you now find it less attractive than you used to?

Chicken and egg is obfuscating in this case. It does not matter. I cannot rely on my memories, perhaps I looked at bandy pixel art when I was 17 and I thought it looked fine. Perhaps something felt off back then too, who knows? I can only go with recent memory and what I feel now. And yes, if you think about something in certain terms, facets of it slowly become clear. Practise and theory together urge me along in a direction, in which, possibly, 50% dither is something I'll be avoiding from now on. It's interesting to me that you feel the need to protect or stand up for the earliest dither. I am not insulting or assaulting it, it isn't such a case as with 'selout' for example, the dither has merit (obviously) and I'm not going to go on a crusade to eradicate it from new-school-pixel-art. It's just observations I make on my own path through the art, that's all I've been doing in this thread.

Atnas, your theory sounds about right that for something to be banding it needs to be more than a single pixel as a cluster. However zoom in on some art and look at dither-aa clash, then even single pixels touching a shape can band and distort the contour. And also, the more you zoom in and the more you can see 50% dither pixels, the more they're segmenting the resolution. It's just an interesting thing.

[Ryumaru]

As I saw it, the beginning of this thread dealt with the minute pixel orders that bring things to the next level of professionalism and aesthetic solidity ( especially with the pixel perfect line examples as well as the balance of resolution disguising and representation) and this seems to gear itself as to what is commonly considered " good practice" in pixel art. So many problems arise when we work with something subjective ( such as the best way to work with a medium) but my defense lies with the thought that the 50% dither is not a poor practice like common banding is, and should not be treated as such. Many oil painters will swear away from the use of black paint, saying that it " deadens" the color and that complimentary mixes should be used to make neutrals instead. What they don't realize is the very style that seemed to advocate such color practices- impressionism never condemned the use of black pigment in this way. The real problem that falsely appears to arise from the use of black ( also prevalent in novice pixel art) is linear ramps that don't accurately change chroma or in the case of lighting and subsurface scattering on skin, hue.

This example is to say that as far as what is generally good pixel practice I believe you are deeming all black pigment ( banding) as poor practice when it is really only the linear ramp ( common banding ) and not the 50% dither ( using black pigment appropriately) that is the problem.

[Helm]

I said there are drawbacks to 50% dither, not that it's all drawbacks.

[ptoing]

^
That I can subscribe to 100%.

Here is an example of where 50% dither (or any kinda dither, depending on how it hugs the edges of shapes or lines) can be problematic. It's something that I coined around 2006 as dither to aa clash, short ditaac.



You can see how in 1B the dither creates antialias between the main red shape and the black and white shapes, thus making the shape look more jagged than wanted.

In 2B the dither fill was made after actually aaing the shapes, as in 2A, and finally in 2C I made some adjustments to the dither at the bottom where the shape is aaed toward white so that there is no dark red of the dither next to the lighter red of the aa to white.

This kinda stuff is mainly a problem when working with limited palettes. Another problem that comes with 50% dither is a style one. Back in the day people pretty much only used dither for 2 reasons. 1) Colour restrictions and 2) On CRT screens dither, esp 50% dither is virtually not perceptible as 2 separate colours and thus the problems of both banding and ditaac become smaller. But nowadays people often use dither because they think it looks cool. It can, but not always does imo.

[Ryumaru]

I said there are drawbacks to 50% dither, not that it's all drawbacks.

Given a small enough area, there are drawbacks to any particular pixel device when battling between good pixel practice and representation of form through squares, no? While banding can only be right if it is accurately describing details ( think occurance of banding in scaled photos) 50% dither's jarring problems only arise on edges such as ptoings example of ditaac.

[Chris2balls]

I hope you don't mind the bump, but I've been trying to find dither patterns that work on edges and this is what I got:

I really like the "corner clusters", I feel that they have a lot of potential.
If you have any more patterns that work, I'd be glad to see them.

[Helm]

That's very interesting. Thanks for posting. It's complex, having to think of what the form you're patterning over is and how its edges go and picking a good pattern related to that on top of everything else.

[Helm]

...Look at these beautiful clusters. Only the 'R' in "Gear" has some banding on the curve that could be eliminated. Also a couple of black pixels where the greendither meets the hair could be removed to the benefit of the image, but whatever. So nice and sharp and well-thought out. Some pixel artist knew their stuff in TOSE.