Screentone generator

Develop Artists Feedback & Testing
1

Hi everybody.
I’ve made a merge request for a screentone generator I’ve made (you can see it here: https://invent.kde.org/graphics/krita/-/merge_requests/372).

I’m pasting the text I’ve written for the MR here also to save you some time:

This is an implementation of screentone filling as a generator. It allows to fill areas with different dot/line patterns, which added to the capability of the generator layers of being painted to set a mask on it, let’s the user to reproduce the classical screentone process which consisted of cutting transparent sheets with dots and stick them in the drawing (example video 1, example video 2).
The patterns are generated completelly procedurally, so the user can change the configuration at any time, and they are fast.
The generator has options to change the pattern, the foreground/background colors and opacity and the geometric transformations (position, size, shear and rotation).

You can download a testing package here (thanks to Dmitry Kazakov): krita-5.0.0-prealpha-screentone-dk1.zip — Яндекс Диск
And here are some example images (you can download the .kra files in the MR message and play with the screentone generator using the testing package):

This image uses the generator as the traditional screentone sheets.

screentone-test-01
screentone-test-01592×842 353 KB

This image uses the screentone generator to make a halftone effect (mixed with blending modes and levels filter) and shows the potential of the generators to be used as the base to make the texture of a halftone filter.
screentone-test-02
screentone-test-02412×412 44.6 KB

I’m looking forward to hear what you think.

10 Likes
2

Bumping this topic for more visibility. Thanks for working on this. This will really be useful for making screen tones like in manga.

1 Like
3

I’ve tried this and I should have commented on it.
It’s very good and not at all difficult to use with many user options.

Thank you for a wonderful addition to all the many things that can be done :slight_smile:

1 Like
4

Nice work :slight_smile:

1 Like
5

This looks lovely! :grin:

6

It’s really nice to see something like this implemented. Seems to work rather well.

One small question/suggestion: Is it possible to forgo the anti-aliasing/midtones of the patterns? I can see this being used quite a bit for manga-making, which is often done in duotone (pure black and white only, no shades of grey).

7

Yes you can. You can adjust the brightness and contrast. If you set the contrast to a high value you end up with a very sharp pattern, and adjusting the brightness you make the dots/lines larger or smaller. Just play with that.
I decided to make it this way because it allows a rich variety of looks, from soft to hard edges in the pattern shapes.

1 Like
8

Ah I see, I was having doubts playing with the contrast for the second example as it still left midtones in some places, but it seems it should be fine with flatter images.

9

Yeah, in the second example, since the hardness/softness of the pattern is controled with the levels filter, it is better to leave the brightness and contrast of the generator as default (50%).