Halftone screens with TikZ?

Question

Is there some built-in way, or with additional packages, to fill regions in a TikZ figure with what printers call "halftone screens" (which are typically described in terms of percentages, and are formed from dots of varying sizes, or sometimes meshes of lines of varying width or density)?

For example, to obtain something like the following, which has two different percentage screens used:

Note that in the above figure the halftone screens are not reproducing very faithfully, as a result of degradation mainly to (i) a pdf scan of the original, printed, image, but also (ii) capturing that image on-screen from the pdf and then exporting it.

If my answer helped then it would be nice to accept it. This is also true for the answers by other people from some of your other questions. — Dr. Manuel Kuehner, May 13 '17 at 13:43

Dr. Manuel Kuehner · Accepted Answer · 2017-05-10T20:45:05.183

5

Because of the picture, not a comment.

I think that Where is the pattern list gallery for pgfplots? is related. The TikZ pattern library may help.
In addition, here's a question about customizing existing patterns.
Here's another similar question about changing the density of an existing pattern.

Personally, I would just use different gray values. I don't see much benefit using the halftone approach. This was maybe necessary when printers had a bad resolution.

edited May 10 '17 at 20:45

answered May 10 '17 at 20:16

Dr. Manuel Kuehner

22,451

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That's a definite help; then, I presume, just use fill. (Now, as a complete newbie to TikZ, I have to learn how best to draw the sort of irregular simple closed curves as are shown in the figure in my question.) – murray May 10 '17 at 20:49
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Re gray values vs. halftones, the issue may be which gives a better result when printed (on laser printers, say). I presume that gray tones would be better for on-screen viewing. – murray May 10 '17 at 20:50

Halftone screens with TikZ?

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