Dither Works

Dither Works - The Best Retro Art Plugin

Give your video and images a hard-edged, vintage hardware aesthetic with Crates Dither Works. This specialized emulation plugin for After Effects and Premiere Pro converts standard high-definition inputs into highly stylized, retro dithered patterns.

Perfect for lo-fi music videos, retro gaming aesthetics, indie animations, and stylized motion graphics, Dither Works algorithmically forces gradients and shading into iconic ordered-dot clusters. Instead of basic pixelation filters, it recreates the limited color depths and rendering charm of classic 8-bit and 16-bit computer systems.

Nostalgic Console & Retro Presets

Skip the manual color picking and jump directly into classic gaming history. Dither Works comes packed with pre-configured color palettes and threshold styles designed to emulate specific vintage hardware profiles.

Classic Handhelds & Systems: Recreate nostalgia using the Game Boy, Atari, and Apple II presets.
Vibrant Retro Themes: Dial in highly stylized color ways like Vaporwave, Neon Tokyo, Acid Green, Acid Purple, and Liminal Sunset.
Graphic Print Styles: Emulate high-contrast physical art mediums with Ink, Tour Poster, Polaroid, Solarize, and Black and White.

Color Override & Custom Influences

Build Custom 5-Color Palettes

For artists who want to craft bespoke palettes from scratch, Dither Works features a deeply customizable color-assignment module.

Multi-Color Remapping: Enable Override Color to unlock a 5-point color map, allowing you to hand-pick colors from dark tones up to bright highlights (Color 1 through Color 5).
Precision Distribution: Fine-tune exactly where colors transition across your image gradients using dedicated Influence sliders for each color slot.
Posterize Compression: Compress your luminance data before the dither process using the Posterize control to restrict gradients into solid blocks of color.

Real-Time Performance & Blending

Heavy mathematical pattern processing shouldn't bottleneck your editor timeline. Dither Works is highly optimized to maintain real-time or near-real-time performance across modern hardware.

Integrated Anti-Aliasing: Enable the Anti-Aliasing checkbox to smooth out jagged pixel steps, ensuring crisp results on high-resolution displays.
Blend with Original: Seamlessly fade the entire effect using the Blend with Original slider, letting you mix 8-bit texturing back into standard footage for a more subtle, contemporary lo-fi finish.
Native Host Workflow: Enjoy instantaneous feedback as you change parameters directly inside the native After Effects or Premiere Pro interface panels.

‍

How to create a Dither in After Effects

Dither Works is the perfect plugin for creating beautiful retro pixelated effects.

Simply add the Dither Works plugin to your videos or artwork, and choose from one of the 20 presets available.

POWERFUL AND FAST

Dither Works uses the GPU to convert your images and videos to beautiful dither patterns in realtime.

COMPATIBLE ON WINDOWS + MAC

Dither Works is compatible with Windows and Mac devices on the latest versions of After Effects!

INCLUDES 20+ PLUGINS

Dither Works is included in the our collection of ProductionCrate Plugins, featuring 20+ exciting plugins such including Chromatic Aberrations, 3D Fractals, Glows and Hologram Generators.

TRY FOR FREE

Dither Works is a Pro plugin in ProductionCrate Plugins. Some other plugins available for Pro Users can be tried with a watermark. Simply install Portal, register for a Free account, and install the ProductionCrate Plugins.

after effects + premiere pro

Included in ProductionCrate Plugins