> Dithering is a retro way of reducing the colors in an image for use on old hardware or in print. Why dither in 2020? Dithering is still commonplace, but most

> Dithering is a retro way of reducing the colors in an image for use on old hardware or in print. Why dither in 2020? Dithering is still commonplace, but mostly invisible, for high-end color. Photoshop quietly dithers by default when converting from 16 bits per channel to 8 bits, for example. This is important when sending 8 bits/channel images out for large-format printing because the invisible differences on screen can become clearly visible on paper - the monitor’s gamut and the printer’s gamut are surprisingly dissimilar. Dither is needed to keep smooth gradients from banding badly, and it sucks when you’re spending $100 per print or more to have nasty bands or even compression artifacts appear.