Artistic screening is a new image reproduction technique incorporating freely created artistic screen elements for generating halftones. Fixed predefined dot contours associated with given intensity levels determine the screen dot shape's growing behavior. Screen dot contours associated with each intensity level are obtained by interpolation between the fixed predefined dot contours. A user-defined mapping transforms screen elements from screen element definition space to screen element rendition space. This mapping can be tuned to produce various effects such as dilatations, contractions and nonlinear deformations of the screen element grid. Discrete screen elements associated with all desired intensity levels are obtained by rasterizing the interpolated screen dot shapes in the screen element rendition space. Since both the image to be reproduced and the screen shapes can be designed independently, the design freedom offered to artists is very great. The interaction between the image to be produced and the screen shapes enables the creation of graphic designs of high artistic quality. Artistic screening is particularly well suited for the reproduction of images on large posters. When looked at from a short distance, the poster's screening layer may deliver its own message. Furthermore, thanks to artistic screening, both full-size and microscopic letters can be incorporated into the image reproduction process. In order to avoid counterfeiting, banknotes may comprise grayscale images with intensity levels produced by microletters of varying size and shape