A halftone representation of continuous tone images is a useful method for displaying images on devices that can display only two gray levels, “black” and “white”. We present a detailed and generalized analysis of a binary representation of continuous tone functions, develop analytic expressions of the Fourier spectrum, and discuss the reconstruction error. The discussion makes distinction between spatially continuous and discrete functions. This analysis is applicable to pulse modulation techniques such as pulse width (PWM), pulse density (PDM) or pulse position (PPM) modulation, which are generated in all types of dither and carrier procedures.