A dispersed-dot stochastic dither array is provided for rendering halftone images having excellent visual quality. For color printing (236), a separate threshold array is generated for each of the color planes, however, the stochastic screens are interlocked so that the threshold arrays are generated while considering the other color threshold arrays. In this manner, a blue noise distribution may be produced by the individual arrays as well as by any combination of the individual arrays. When generating a single threshold array for a color plane, a particular criterion is used to determine where the next threshold value should be located, and the selection of a threshold location in each array considers the criterion for all the threshold arrays being generated. By using the interlocked threshold arrays approach, the overall visual affect will be improved for both individual threshold arrays and for a combination of more than one of the threshold arrays. The present invention (200) also is used to generating a set of interlocked dot profiles which do not use a threshold array for halftoning. In an opposite sense, the interlocked arrays can be generated without using dot profiles during the formative steps of the threshold array.
METHOD FOR HALFTONING USING INTERLOCKED THRESHOLD ARRAYS OR INTERLOCKED DOT PROFILES