Diffractive Optical Elements (DOEs) are commonly used in many applications such as laser beam shaping, recording of micro reliefs, wave front analysis, metrology and many others where they can replace single or multiple conventional optical elements (diffractive or refractive). One of the most versatile way to produce them, is to use computer assisted techniques for their design and optimization, as well as optical or electron beam micro‐lithography techniques for the final fabrication. The fundamental figures of merit involved in the optimization of such devices are both the diffraction efficiency and the signal to noise ratio evaluated in the reconstructed wave front at the image plane. A design and optimization algorithm based on the error—reduction method (Gerchberg and Saxton) is proposed to obtain binary discrete phase‐only Fresnel DOEs that will be used to produce specific intensity patterns. Some experimental results were obtained using a spatial light modulator acting as a binary programmable diffractive phase element. Although the DOEs optimized here are discrete in phase, they present an acceptable signal noise relation and diffraction efficiency.