halftone
Americannoun
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Also called middle-tone. (in painting, drawing, graphics, photography, etc.) a value intermediate between light and dark.
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Printing.
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a process in which gradation of tone in an image is conveyed by first photographing the image through a screen to break up the continuous tones of the image into minute, closely spaced dots, then using the print obtained to produce a metal plate by photoengraving, and finally using the plate to reproduce the original image by letterpress or offset printing.
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the metal plate used in such a process.
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the print obtained in such a process.
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adjective
noun
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a process used to reproduce an illustration by photographing it through a fine screen to break it up into dots
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the etched plate thus obtained
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the print obtained from such a plate
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art a tonal value midway between highlight and dark shading
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music another word for semitone
adjective
Etymology
Origin of halftone
Vocabulary lists containing halftone
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Instead, the changes in shape and texture are controlled entirely by the digitally printed halftone patterns within a single sheet.
From Science Daily • Feb. 6, 2026
TJ: I’ve been using the halftone line to transform my mother’s images and cause them to intersect and intertwine with my images of moments that I’ve had since coming out of isolation.
From Los Angeles Times • Sep. 29, 2023
The other is Jacqueline Humphries, whose dense abstractions of halftone dots and emoticons reaffirm painting as an ideal medium of digital perception.
From New York Times • Apr. 30, 2022
A crucial contrast to Jackson’s over-manipulations is seen in some footage of contemporaneous newspaper photographs, shown in extreme closeup, with their halftone dots rivalling the image itself in prominence.
From The New Yorker • Feb. 19, 2019
You know a halftone consists of a photograph through a screen composed of lines running perpendicular to each other—a coarse screen for newspaper work, and a fine screen for better work, such as in magazines.
From The Poisoned Pen by Reeve, Arthur B. (Arthur Benjamin)
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
