What is dithering?

what is dithering?

Search for: what is dithering?

Here is wikipedia ref

This means a source color may not be able to be reproduced exactly. If you go to the nearest color then you will see that many similarly-shaded source colors will end up all as a single color. This will produce patches in images.

Each pixel has three components: RGB

each is called a channel with certain bits allocated for carrying that information

A 24 bit depth pixel could have three channels with 8 bits each

So dithering will provide a better gradient as the colors are intelligently approximated

What is anti-aliasing then?

Search for: What is anti-aliasing then?

As the image is shrunk how to give the polygon edges a smoother look!! It appears to be concerned with interpolation and extrapolation of additional pixels.

dithering anti-aliasing filtering

Search for: dithering anti-aliasing filtering

Here is a nice article summarizing what you can do to an image

dithering will adjust color depth at each pixel. anti-aliasing will interpolate better for smoother realistic edges. rendering in memory with higher resolution and then using filtering (sampling) to a lower resolution may address anti-aliasing better.

How to improve image quality: dithering, filtering, anti-aliasing

Search for: How to improve image quality: dithering, filtering, anti-aliasing

Another good article on anti-aliasing basics

OpenGL Blending

Search for: OpenGL Blending

Here is an article from opengl.org

One of the outputs of a fragment processor are colors. Without blending, these colors, if chosen, based on culling and other effects, will become the colors of the framebuffer and you will see them on the screen. But if Blending is In effect, there may be already colors in the color buffer whichh need to be blended with this new set of colors. One of the common uses of blending is to provide a degree of transparency. OpenGL allows a number of blending functions to control the blending behavior.