Dot tone is for expressing gray for a monochrome print.

Because it is an expression method made for printing, if you display the dots on a monitor, it might show moiré, but if you print it out, it may not show.

If moiré is appearing in your work, you need to deduce whether or not is is only appearing through your monitor or not.

If the moiré can be seen via the monitor, scale the image to 100% and check how clean it looks.

If it looks as clean as in the image below when scaled to 100%, there will be no moiré when printing even when the image is scaled down.

Left: Scaled down Right: 100% scale

If the moiré still appears when the image is at 100% scale or when it is printed, the moiré was generated.
Check as follows.

Overlaying tone

When overlaying tones, the Frequency and the angle of the dots must match.

The Frequency and the angleof the dots can be confirmed in [Layer Property].

When tones with different Frequencies or angles overlay each other, moiré will appear as in the below image so match each value via the layer property.

Left: 60-line tone and 50-line tone overlay
Right: tone angled at 45 and tone angled at 50 overlay.

Color of the dots

The color of the dot of the tone must be black.
If the color of the dot is gray, there is a risk of moiré generating upon printing.

In this case, it will still look clean on the monitor, which makes it difficult to notice before printing.

If moiré appears after printing, scale up the image and check the color of the tone. If it is gray, turn it back to black and print it again.

The above troubles are likely to occur when tone is erased with a non-binary tool (such as an airbrush).

If you want to erase tone with a brush with Posterization, from the layer property palette set the mask’s posterization to [Yes] and the Effect range to [Mask image].

Setting it to [Mask image], expresses the brush’s design as dots which ensures that the dots surrounding the erased area remain black and, eliminates the risk of moiré.

If Posterization is set to [Yes] and the Effect range is set to [Image], the brush will fade the color of the tone making it gray instead of transparent when erased.

Left: Masked image, Right: Image

When overlaying gray and dot tone.

When mixing grayscale and dots, there is a risk of moiré where they overlay.

The dots themselves are black, so at first glance, there might not seem to be an issue. However, when printing in black and white, the gray part is automatically exported as fine dots. These overlapping dots may produce moiré.

When scaling up/down completed works

Moiré generally occurs when the size of the image the tone is pasted to changes. The toning function of Clip Studio Paint stores the information of the dots internally and converts dot size properly when scaling up or down allowing the files to be exported or printed without causing moiré.

When changing the size for export, set [For comic] in the [Process when scaling] dialog box.

Note: For printing, you can select [For comic] in the [Print Settings] from the [File] Menu.

If you set [For illustration], the image is scaled down after the internal integration, so anti-aliasing is applied to the tone and moiré may occur when printing.

For images with dot tone, you must export with the [For comic] setting.

Left: Scale down [For comic] Right: Scale down [For illustration]

When exporting images from Clip Studio Paint to PSD or other general file formats, the internal information of the dot tone is lost. When the file is read or scaled down by other graphics software it read it as an image which might produce moiré.

When printing, if it is scaled down by the printer, moiré may also be produced.

If you want to scale down the image without producing moiré, it must scale down in Clip Studio Paint and then exported.

When posting dot tone works online

Dot tone is used for the printing so the chance moiré will be produced when an image is posted online is high.

For images meant to be posted online, it is better to create the work in grayscale.

Upon exporting, set the expression color to [grayscale], and uncheck [Enable tone effect for layer] in the [Advanced settings of color].

Note: If it is originally painted with gray without using dot tone, there is no problem even if this option is left checked.

When you want to use dot tone on images you plan to post online, make sure your canvas size is the same pixel dimensions as the display size. Also, adjust the Frequency so that the dots of the tone are on the large side. Smaller tone dots run the risk of creating moiré.

Make sure to check the image after exporting to make sure no moiré has been created by setting its scale is 100%. If it is generated, then go back and change the tone’s Frequency and export settings.

Example

The below drawing is 300px x 260px at 72dpi. The Frequency is set between 20 to 30.

Anti-aliasing is applied so that the line art looks smooth. When exporting, set the expression color to [Grayscale], enable tone effects, and export it at the same pixel dimensions as the display size.

Sometimes images are scaled up or down during the process of posting them online. In this case, there is a chance moiré will be generated in the image.

If this happens, check the highest pixel value of your upload destination, scale your image within Clip Studio Paint, export it, and then upload it. This should reduce the amount of moiré.

Note: If the image is scaled down too much, the dots may become too fine, and the image will lose texture.

Note: To prevent tone from producing moiré, we advise setting the Process when scaling to [For comics] when exporting, but depending on the scaling ratio, your image may look relatively cleaner by setting it to [For illustrations] instead.