Graph‐based Black and White Stylization

Abstract Stippling is an art style forming images from large numbers of small dots. Computer graphics practitioners have proposed numerous algorithms for stippling and stippling variants over the years. In this paper, we propose a black and white image stylization technique in which the image is formed from heterogeneous black and white vector marks, with stipples and larger regions represented by polygons. Our algorithm applies two passes of stippling: first, we apply stippling to an importance map of the input image; then, using the stipples from the first pass as nodes in a planar graph, we create a binary stippling by labeling each graph node as either black or white using error diffusion. A connected component analysis of the resulting labeling, followed by vectorization of the components, yields a high‐quality black and white representation of the original image. Isolated nodes, sharing a color with none of their neighbors, are akin to stipples; larger groups are polygons. We provide quantitative and qualitative comparisons with previous work on stippling and black and white rendering.