A system and method for the halftoning of gray scale images by utilizing a pixel-by-pixel comparison of the image against an anisotropic stochastic screen is disclosed. The anisotropic stochastic screen comprises a non-deterministic, non-white noise function which, when thresholded, is designed to produce anisotropic dot patterns having a power spectrum characterized as having negligible low frequency components and a high-frequency region which has an absence of stronger dominant spikes.