Look-Up-Table Based Halftoning Algorithm∗
Pingshan Li and Jan P. Allebach
School of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN 47907
{pingshan,allebach}@ecn.purdue.edu
Abstract
Screen design requires that the stacking property be
obeyed. This constraint limits the texture quality at
each gray level. To improve texture quality, we in-
troduce a look-up-table based halftoning algorithm for
which the stacking constraint is not necessarily satis-
fied but the binary patterns for individual levels are
still correlated. The algorithm improves the halftone
image quality compared with screening.
1 Introduction
Screening is a low complexity halftoning algorithm
that has been used in many applications. One of the
most popular screens is the particular dispersed dot
screen introduced by Bayer[1] for use with bitmap dis-
plays. In recent years, various techniques for macro
screen design have been developed [2][3].
For screen design, the binary patterns at each gray
level must satisfy the stacking constraint. The stack-
ing constraint ensures that the halftoning operation
can be implemented by thresholding. However, it
severely limits the choice of texture at each gray level.
To improve the texture quality, look-up-table based
halftoning algorithms have been investigated by tak-
ing out the stacking constraint.
Sullivan et al described a look-up-table method in
which the binary patterns are optimized for individual
gray levels [4]. However, since the patterns are uncor-
related, it produces poor quality halftone images when
applied to general continuous-tone images.
We propose a new look-up-table (LUT) based
halftoning algorithm in which the stacking constraint
is not necessarily satisfied, but the binary patterns are
still correlated to minimize the artifact noise.
2 Screen and LUT
A screen is defined by a matrix of threshold values.
This matrix is periodically tiled over the continuous-
tone image. Each pixel is thresholded by the corre-
sponding matrix threshold value.
∗ Research supported by the Hewlett-Packard Company.
Let f [m, n] denote the input continuous-tone im-
age, t[m, n] denote the screen matrix, and g[m, n] the
output halftone image. Then a screening process can
be represented by

1, if f [m, n] ≥ t[m, n],
g[m, n] = (1)
0, otherwise.
The dot profile function p[m, n; a] is a stack of binary
textures used to represent each level of constant ab-
sorptance a.

1, if a ≥ t[m, n],
p[m, n; a] = (2)
0, otherwise.
The output halftone image can also be obtained by a
point-to-point spatial mapping [5]
g[m, n] = p[m, n; f [m, n] ] (3)
If the dot profile corresponds to a screen, it will satisfy
the stacking constraint:
p[m, n; b] = 1 =⇒ p[m, n; a] = 1, ∀a > b (4)
To improve the texture quality, we design a more gen-
eral form of LUT by relaxing the stacking constraint.
The LUT based halftoning process can still be repre-
sented by (3). However, (4) is not necessarily satisfied.
Because the stacking constraint is not necessarily
satisfied for the LUT, the halftone pixels may not
change consistently when image gray value changes.
There are two major artifacts caused by the incon-
sistency of the LUT: black clusters and white voids.
Black cluster artifacts occur where the halftone pixel
toggles from white to black while actually the absorp-
tance decreases; white void artifacts occur where the
halftoned pixel toggles from black to white while the
gray value increases.
We create a series of artificial images that produce
these artifacts. Consider two patterns at levels a and
b with a > b. The image that produces black clusters
is defined as
 0.7 0.7 0.7 0.7 0.7 0.7 0.4 0.4 0.4 0.4 0.4 0.4 0.7 0.7 0.7 0.7 0.7 0.7 0.4 0.4 0.4 0.4 0.4 0.4
0.7 0.7 0.7 0.7 0.7 0.7 0.4 0.4 0.4 0.4 0.4 0.4 0.7 0.7 0.4 0.7 0.7 0.7 0.4 0.4 0.7 0.4 0.4 0.4
0.7 0.7 0.7 0.7 0.7 0.7 0.4 0.4 0.4 0.4 0.4 0.4 0.7 0.4 0.7 0.7 0.7 0.7 0.4 0.7 0.4 0.4 0.4 0.4
0.7 0.7 0.7 0.7 0.7 0.7 0.4 0.4 0.4 0.4 0.4 0.4 0.7 0.7 0.4 0.7 0.4 0.7 0.4 0.4 0.7 0.4 0.7 0.4
0.7 0.7 0.7 0.7 0.7 0.7 0.4 0.4 0.4 0.4 0.4 0.4 0.7 0.7 0.7 0.7 0.7 0.7 0.4 0.4 0.4 0.4 0.4 0.4
0.7 0.7 0.7 0.7 0.7 0.7 0.4 0.4 0.4 0.4 0.4 0.4 0.7 0.7 0.7 0.7 0.7 0.7 0.4 0.4 0.4 0.4 0.4 0.4

f [m, n] = 0.7 f [m, n] = 0.4 f B [m, n; 0.7, 0.4] f W [m, n; 0.7, 0.4]

p[m, n; 0.7] p[m, n; 0.4] g B [m, n; 0.7, 0.4] g W [m, n; 0.7, 0.4]

Figure 1: Black clusters and white voids between gray levels 0.4 and 0.7.

Let e[m, n] denote the error image obtained by


b, if p[m, n; a] = 0, p[m, n; b] = 1;
f B [m, n; a, b] =
a, otherwise.
(5)
Similarly, the image that produces white voids can be
defined as
 ẽ(x, y) =
W a, if p[m, n; a] = 0, p[m, n; b] = 1;
f [m, n; a, b] =
b, otherwise.
(6)
Figure 1 shows an example of the artificial images
f B [m, n; a, b] and f W [m, n; a, b] and the corresponding
halftone images g B [m, n; a, b] and g W [m, n; a, b] which
are obtained by applying the LUT.
3 LUT Design Using DBS
The direct binary search (DBS) method uses a hu-
man visual system (HVS) model and rendering device
model to minimize the perceived error between the
halftone image and the continuous-tone image. The
HVS model is a linear shift-invariant low pass filter
[6][7]. The frequency response of this filter is given by
√ halftone image, we evaluate the impact of toggling the
aLb exp(− u2 + v 2 )
H(u, v) = , (7)
c ln(L) + d
where L is average monitor luminance in cd/m2 , a =
131.6, b = −0.3188, c = 0.525, and d = 3.91.
e[m, n] = g[m, n] − f [m, n]. (8)
Then the perceived error between the halftone image
and the continuous-tone image is represented as
XX
e[m, n]p̃(x − mX, y − nX), (9)
m n
where p̃(x, y) is the point spread function obtained by
taking the inverse Fourier transform of H(u, v); and
X corresponds to the lattice of addressable points of
the output device.
The error metric used as a cost function by DBS is
the total squared error given by
Z Z
E= |ẽ(x, y)|2 dxdy. (10)
An iterative toggling/swapping scheme is used to
minimize E. The algorithm starts with an initial
halftone image which can be obtained by randomly
thresholding or screening. For each pixel of the
pixel or swapping its value with one of its eight near-
est neighbors. If any change reduces the error, the
change which gives the greatest decrease in the error
is accepted. We iteratively repeat the process on the
halftone image until no change is accepted.
 The LUT is designed level by level starting with
level 0, the lightest level. The first pattern is designed
using the regular DBS method. After the initial pat-
tern is designed, we proceed to design the patterns at
the darker gray levels.
We optimize the texture quality while minimizing
the artifact noise between the currently designed pat-
tern and all the previously designed patterns. This is
accomplished using the following error metric:
X
i−1 X
i−1
EiLUT = wi Ei + B
wi,j B
Ei,j + W W
wi,j Ei,j
j=0 j=0
where Ei is the perceived error between the binary
pattern at level i and the continuous-tone image with
constant absorptance N −1 i
; and E B and E W are the
perceived errors between the artificial images defined
by (5) (6) and their corresponding halftone images ob-
tained from the LUT.
B W
The weights wi , wi,j , and wi,j control the texture
quality at the specific gray level and the errors caused
by the inconsistency of the LUT. By adjusting the
weights, we can balance the halftone image quality at
each level and the artifacts noise between levels.
The previous binary pattern p[m, n; Ni−1 −1 ] is used
i
as the initial pattern for p[m, n; N −1 ]. We first toggle
a number of pixels from white to black so that the
average pixel value is equal to the corresponding ab-
sorptance. Then in order to preserve the tone, only
i
swapping operations are performed on p[m, n; N −1
LUT
until Ei is minimized locally. Unlike DBS screen
design for which the stacking constraint must be sat-
isfied, the changes in LUT can take place at any loca-
i
tion. Note that whenever binary pattern p[m, n; N −1
is updated, the corresponding artificial images f andB
f W and their halftone images g B and g W must also
i ing constraint is not satisfied, more than one thresh-
be updated, since they are dependent on p[m, n; N −1
We repeat this process for all levels until the darkest
level is finished.
4 Experimental Results
Figure 2 shows the peceived error between the
halftone and continuous-tone images at each level for
B
different values of wi with wi,j = 0.8j−i ; wi,j
W
= 0.8j−i .
The LUT size is 128 × 128 × 256, where the first two
dimensions are the spatial size, and the last one is
the number of gray levels. It can be seen that as wi
increases, the perceived error at each level decreases,
and higher texture quality is obtained at each level.
Figures 3-5 compare halftone images generated
with the DBS screen (Fig. 3) and the LUT (Figs.
4-5). They are printed at 300 dpi. When wi = 15.0 as
0.018
0.016
0.014
0.012
RMS error
0.01
0.008 screen
LUT
0.006
LUT
0.004
DBS patterns
0.002
(11) 0
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1
absorptance
Figure 2: Comparison of RMS error of the binary pat-
terns at individual gray levels for screen, LUT, and
uncorrelated DBS patterns.
shown in Fig. 4, the sky region has better quality than
the screen image; the artifacts are essentially unnotice-
able. Therefore, the overall halftone image quality is
better than that obtained from the DBS screen. When
wi = 25.0 in Fig. 5, although the quality of the sky
region is better than in Fig. 4, the car body starts
showing minor void and cluster artifacts. In general,
there is a tradeoff between the texture quality and the
artifact noise.
5 Improving Memory Efficiency
] A screen can be stored as a matrix of threshold val-
ues. For a 256-level screen one byte per pixel is needed
for the screen. However, extra memory is required for
the same size LUT since one bit per pixel is needed to
] store all the patterns. This memory requirement can
be reduced by representing the LUT halftoning algo-
rithm as a thresholding process. Because the stack-
].
old may be needed for each location. Hence, each
element in the matrix is an array of thresholds. We
use t[m, n; i] to denote this matrix. To determine the
thresholds for a specified location (m, n), we check
the binary value of the dot profile function from level
0(white) to level 255(black). Let t[m, n; 0] be the first
pixel value at which the binary value in the LUT is
1; let t[m, n, 1] be the first pixel value at which the
binary value toggles back from 1 to 0; and t[m, n, 2]
be the next pixel value where the binary value toggles
from 0 to 1, and so on. To binarize a pixel we compare
the pixel value with the thresholds one by one in the
corresponding array to determine the output binary
value.
Since the binary patterns are correlated, this imple-
 Figure 3: Halftone image generated by DBS screen.
comparisons memory
/pixel (bytes)
DBS screen 1.000 16384
LUT (wi = 15.0) 1.067 18500
LUT (wi = 25.0) 2.014 50866
Table 1: Computational complexity and memory cost
for LUT with size 128 × 128 × 256.
mentation is very efficient in saving memory, although
more threshold comparisons are needed for the LUT
process. Table 1 compares the memory required for
the different LUTs and the number of threshold com-
parisons that are needed to binarize the images shown
in Figs. 3-5. For actual implementation, extra opera-
tions such as addressing and loop counting are needed
as well as extra memory to store the number of thresh-
olds in the array at each location.
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Figure 4: Halftone image generated by LUT(wi = 15.0).

Figure 5: Halftone image generated by LUT(wi = 25.0).