# Halftone: screen-print style designs for black shirts

URL: https://helpcenter.readypixl.com/articles/halftone
Markdown: https://helpcenter.readypixl.com/articles/halftone.md
Section: Pipelines
Summary: Turns a design on a black background into a transparent halftone (dots or lines) for screen printing — great for shadows, fire and glow that a normal background remover can't keep. Free.

Halftone turns a design into a **transparent halftone** — the dot pattern from the old screen-printing days that still sells well today. It's a form of background removal made for **black shirts**.

## When to use it

- Your design is on a **black background** and has shadows, smoke, fire, glow or semi-transparent parts that would look bad after a remove a solid background color.
- You want a vintage screen-print look.

Right now Halftone is designed for **black backgrounds** (other colors are planned). Preview on a black canvas background to see how it will print on a black shirt, and on white to see the dots themselves.

## How to use it

1. Add **Halftone** to your pipeline.
2. Leave **Mode** on **Auto** — it works well for most images.
3. Switch the canvas preview to **black** to check the result.
4. Want more control? Switch Mode to **Custom** (see below).

It works across your whole batch, like every ReadyPixl tool.

## Custom settings

Custom is all about preference — there's no right or wrong.

| Setting | What it does | Default |
| --- | --- | --- |
| **Crop Background** | Trims the background around the edges. | On |
| **Crop Threshold** (0–255) | How dark counts as background when cropping. | 25 |
| **Black Point** / **White Point** (0–255) | Which tones become no-dots and full dots. | 16 / 100 |
| **Gamma** (0.1–3) | Brightens or darkens the midtones. Higher can add a lot of color and brightness. | 1 |
| **Invert for Dark Garment** | Inverts the tones for dark shirts. | Off |
| **Method** | **Halftone** (dots or lines) or **Diffusion** (scattered dither). | Halftone |
| **Screen Frequency (LPI)** (5–100) | How many lines per inch — bigger number = smaller, finer dots. | 35 |
| **Screen Angle** (0–90°) | The direction of the dot / line rows. | 23.5° |
| **Dot Shape** | **Round** dots or **Line** shapes. | Round |
| **Screen DPI** (72–1200) | The print resolution the pattern is built for. | 300 |

## Tips

- Pair it with **Image Adjustment** — **Colorize** gives halftones a nice single-color look.
- Try both: run one batch with normal background removal and another with Halftone, and keep whichever looks better. Save each as a preset.

## What to read next

- **[Image Adjustment](image-adjustment)** — brightness, contrast and Colorize
- **[Color Removal V2](color-removal)** — normal background removal
- **[Saving and loading presets](../getting-started/presets)**