The Secret... Noise

Dithering requires the addition of spatial noise to the original signal (color intensity). This noise can be regular (a repeated signal that is independent of either the input or output), correlated (a signal that is related to the input), random, or some combination.

Dithering can be neatly summarized as a quantization process where noise has has been introduced to the input. The character of the dither is determined entirely by the structure of the noise. Note: Dithering decreases the SNR yet improves the percieved quality of the output.

Lecture 3   Slide 24   6.837 Fall '01