Screentone

Manga-style dot, line, or texture patterns used in place of gray shading, originally supplied as cut-and-stick sheets.

screen tonemanga dotscomic shading dotsadhesive tone sheetZip-A-ToneBen Day dot shadingthose gray dot patterns in mangascreentoon

See it

Live demo coming soon

What it is

Screentone is a ready-made pattern of dots, lines, or textures used to represent gray values and atmosphere in black-and-white comics. Artists traditionally cut adhesive tone sheets to shape and burnished them onto artwork; digital drawing tools now provide the same patterns through masks and tone layers.

Reach for it when manga or comic shading needs to reproduce cleanly with solid black ink. Different dot sizes and spacing create different grays, while lines, bursts, and grain patterns can signal mood or motion.

Gotcha: scaling or rotating a raster tone after applying it can produce moire and broken dots. Set the final output size first, keep the pattern resolution consistent, and preview it at actual print or screen size.

Ask AI for it

Shade this black-and-white comic panel with screentone: use fixed-size round halftone dots clipped to shadow shapes, vary gray value by dot spacing rather than opacity, keep faces and highlights mostly white, and add one sparse line tone for the background. Rasterize at final output size so the dots stay crisp and do not form moire.

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