An intermediate or middle tone in a painting, engraving, photograph, etc.; a middle tint, neither very dark nor very light.

A print obtained by the half-tone photo-engraving process.

the etched plate used to reproduce a half-tone illustration.

A method of reproducing a black and white photograph or illustration by representing various shades of grey as a series of black and white dots.

Gradations in the dark-light continuum achieved on the printing plate using specialized tools, techniques and/or chemical solutions. (See also aquatint, sugar lift, dotted manner, splatter technique.)

The representation of tonal gradation by an image composed of dots of varied sizes, the centers of which are equidistant.

A method of simulating continuous-tone images with a device that has a small number of output tones, colours, or intensities. The patterns used are called dithers.

There are two common definitions for the term halftone, as far as prepress and printing is concerned; 1. Traditionally, a halftone screen is a piece of film with a grid of lines (line screen). It is used to break down continuous tone images, such as photographs, into half-tone images for printing. The halftone screen breaks down the image into a symetrically aligned series of dots - known as halftone dots. Nowadays, this process is generally done digitally, via an imagesetter. 2. A continuous tone image that has been commercially printed, using the halftone process, is also referred to as a halftone imge.

A continuous-tone photograph reduced to tiny dots of various sizes, that when printed, give the illusion of continuous tones.