How halftone printing works

Before digital screens, printers reproduced photographs by photographing them through a fine mesh screen to break continuous tones into dots. Large dots cover more paper and appear dark; tiny dots leave more white and appear light.

Digital halftone art

Today halftone effects are popular in poster design, comic-book style artwork, retro branding, and t-shirt printing. Adjusting dot size and contrast lets you range from subtle texture overlays to bold graphic prints.

Print resolution: LPI guide

Print type	Lines per inch (LPI)	Notes
Newspaper	~85 LPI	Coarse; visible dots on newsprint
Standard magazine	133–150 LPI	Common offset lithography
High-quality magazine	150–175 LPI	Glossy paper, fine detail
Fine art / art book	175–200+ LPI	Near-photographic quality
Screen printing	45–65 LPI	Coarser due to mesh; varies by mesh count

CMYK screen angles

In four-color offset printing, each ink color's halftone screen is rotated to a different angle to prevent the dots from aligning and creating a distracting interference pattern called moiré. Traditional angles: Cyan 15°, Magenta 75°, Yellow 0° (least visible), Black (Key) 45° (most prominent). Modern stochastic (FM) screening uses randomly placed dots of uniform size instead, eliminating moiré entirely.

Pop art and halftones

Roy Lichtenstein's paintings (1960s) replicated the Ben-Day dot process used in cheap comic book printing - hand-painted dots that mimicked the mechanical halftone screens of mass-market print. By reproducing these dots at large scale in fine art, Lichtenstein elevated the industrial printing artifact into an artistic statement about mass media and popular culture.