How to Halftone a Photo for Screen Printing
A practical guide to turning a continuous-tone photograph into a halftone that burns crisp, prints clean and survives the mesh. Whether you're printing a one-off poster or a t-shirt run, the same five decisions matter.
Why halftone for screen printing?
Screen printing pushes solid ink through a fine mesh. It can't reproduce continuous tones the way an inkjet can — it only knows "ink here, no ink here." Halftone is the trick: you split the image into dots of varying sizes, and from a distance your eye reads them as gradients.
Get the halftone wrong, and your print muddies, blocks up, or shows moiré with the mesh. Get it right, and you can print photographic-feeling images with a single ink color.
The five decisions
Pick the right LPI (lines per inch)
LPI controls dot frequency. For screen printing, you almost always want 35–55 LPI — much lower than offset (133+ LPI) because screen mesh cannot hold tiny dots.
| Mesh count | Recommended LPI |
|---|---|
| 110 mesh (t-shirts, posters) | 35–45 LPI |
| 156 mesh (finer detail) | 45–55 LPI |
| 200+ mesh (very fine art prints) | 55–65 LPI |
Rule of thumb: LPI ≈ mesh count ÷ 3 to 4. Go higher and dots fall through the mesh; go lower and you lose detail.
Pick the dot angle
For single-color screen prints, use 22.5°. This avoids moiré patterns with the mesh, which usually runs at 0°/90°.
For multi-color prints (CMYK), use the classic offsets: 15° Cyan, 75° Magenta, 0° Yellow, 45° Black. Our CMYK halftone tool handles this automatically.
Pick the dot shape
STUDIO·ITY supports five shapes: round, square, diamond, line, cross.
- Round — safest, most photographic. Default choice.
- Square — bolder, more graphic. Reads as "intentional print" look.
- Diamond — for textured, mid-century feel.
- Line — great for editorial/newspaper aesthetic.
- Cross — distinctive, stylized — best for posters not photos.
Adjust threshold and contrast
Burning a screen has a quirk: midtones tend to block up — small dots fill in. Compensate by:
- Pushing contrast up by 10–20% before halftoning.
- Lifting midtone threshold slightly so the smallest dots become "no dot."
- Doing a test burn before committing to a full run.
Export SVG for crisp burns
This is where Pro pays for itself. A PNG halftone is a raster of tiny dots — when you scale it up for a poster, the dots get fuzzy and the edges soften.
An SVG halftone is made of real vector dots — perfect circles, squares, diamonds — that stay razor-sharp at any size. Burn directly from the SVG and your screens come out crisp every time.
A typical screen-printing workflow
- Start with a high-contrast photo (more contrast than you'd normally want).
- Open the halftone tool and pick round dots, 45 LPI, angle 22.5°.
- Tweak threshold until shadows are solid but not crushed, and highlights have visible smallest dots but aren't blown.
- Export SVG (Pro) or full-resolution PNG.
- Import into Illustrator or Affinity Designer — confirm dot shapes look as expected.
- Print onto transparency film at 100% scale.
- Burn onto your screen, print as normal.
Troubleshooting
My midtones are blocking up
Lower the LPI (try 35 instead of 55), or increase contrast before halftoning.
I see moiré with the mesh
Change the dot angle to 22.5° (or 45° for some meshes). Avoid 0° and 90°.
Smallest dots aren't holding
Your LPI is too high for your mesh count. Lower it to LPI ≈ mesh ÷ 3.
I'm losing detail in the highlights
Push the midtone threshold up slightly so smallest dots survive the burn. Or expose your screen 10–15% less.
Ready to halftone your photo?
Free at 600px to test. Upgrade to Pro for full-resolution PNG and SVG vector export — both unlocked for a one-time €9.