Video Effects
Open the editor

Dither video and photos

Turn a video or photo into a few tones made of dots, the dither effect of old computer screens and printers. Set the dots with the controls and compare them with the original, then open your own file and export it at full resolution. It runs in your browser: your file is never uploaded.

  • Free
  • No upload
  • No account needed
  • No watermark
  • MP4, WebM, PNG, JPEG, WebP
A woman in an ivory linen dress under a stone arch hung with leaves and white flowers, the right half of the frame dithered to four greys made of dots.

Dither

Amount
Style
Colour
Levels
Dot size
Open your own fileOpen this look in the editor

How to dither a video online

  1. Open your video or photo

    Choose Open your own file: the editor opens with the effect, ready for your file (videos as MP4, MOV, M4V, WebM, MKV; photos as JPEG, PNG, WebP, AVIF). It opens in your browser, and nothing is uploaded.

  2. Set the dots and compare

    Choose ordered or noise dots, black and white or colour, how many levels and how big the dots are. Compare shows the original beside the result; play a video to see the dots move with it.

  3. Export it

    In the editor, export the video as MP4 or WebM, or the photo as PNG, JPEG or WebP, at its full resolution, with no watermark.

Ordered or noise: two kinds of dots

Ordered dithering draws the regular crosshatch of an 8×8 Bayer matrix, as old computer screens did. The pattern stays in place from frame to frame, so on video the picture moves through it and the dots don't crawl.

Noise scatters the dots evenly instead, and changes them every frame, like film grain: a paused frame holds still, and the export matches the preview frame for frame.

Black and white or colour, 2 to 16 levels

Black and white dithers the picture's brightness to greys: at two levels, every dot is pure black or pure white, the 1-bit look. Colour dithers red, green and blue each, so two levels give eight colours: black, white, red, green, blue, cyan, magenta and yellow.

Levels sets how many tones each channel has, from 2 to 16: the more levels, the subtler the dots. The tones in between are made of dots that carry their light, worked out in linear light, so a mid-grey keeps its brightness. Amount mixes the dithered picture with the original; at 100 only the dithered tones show.

A dot size that holds at any resolution

Dot size goes from 1 to 16 pixels on a 1080p frame, scaled with the resolution and rounded to whole pixels, so each dot holds one tone: a 4K export has the same pattern as the small preview. At 1 the dots are as fine as a 1080p frame's pixels; larger sizes give a coarser, chunkier retro pattern.

Dithered video that survives the export

Video encoders smooth fine detail away, which can blur dots of one or two pixels. The export keeps them: in Chrome and Firefox, where it was measured, a dithered video comes out with its dots intact.

Sites you post to encode your video again, at a lower bitrate, which can soften the finest dots; a dot size of 2 or 3 comes through better. For a photo, PNG keeps every dot exactly, while JPEG and WebP soften their edges a little.

Retro looks to build with it

In the editor, Dither combines with Pixelate for big blocky pixels, Scanlines for an old screen, or Black and white and Light and colour to set the picture's tones first. By default it applies after the colour, the glows and the grain and before letterbox bars, so the picture is graded before it is dithered; drag the effects into another order to change that.

Your files stay on your device

Everything happens right on your device, in your browser. Your videos and photos are opened, edited and saved there, and never sent anywhere.

Because nothing is uploaded, your files are safe: nothing can leak, and no one else, not even us, ever sees them. You don't need an account: one holds only your email address and the AI agents you let in, and signing in keeps a single cookie. An agent's instructions to your editor pass through our server and are deleted as soon as the editor has carried them out; your files never do. Without cookies, the site counts visits and a few choices, such as a preset or effect you pick and the format you export to, but never which files you open or anything in them.

Exports leave out hidden details such as where a video was recorded, and a shared link carries only your settings, never your file.

Files and browsers

Opens MP4, MOV, WebM and MKV videos and JPEG, PNG, WebP and AVIF photos, and exports MP4 or WebM, or PNG, JPEG or WebP, at full resolution, keeping the original sound where the browser can. Works in current Chrome and Edge on a computer or Android, in current Firefox on a computer and in Safari 26 or later; HDR video is converted to standard range.

Questions about dithering a video

Choose Open your own file above to open the editor with the effect, open your video there, choose the style, colour, levels and dot size, and export it as MP4 or WebM. In the editor, Dither is under Add effect.

More effects to try

See every effect