Black and white photo converter with 15 looks, from film noir to ink wash
Add a photo on the left and the preview on the right turns monochrome right away, with 15 thumbnails underneath showing the same shot in every look. Pick the one you like, adjust brightness, contrast, grain and vignette, then hit save. Your photo never leaves the browser.
Add a photo
Drop an image here
JPG · PNG · WEBP · AVIF · BMP · up to 20MB
Adjust
Preview
- Source size (px)
- —
- Mean brightness
- —
- Contrast
- —
- Tonal range (0-255)
- —
Monochrome looks
Showing a sample photo. Add your own and it takes over right away.
Conversion and saving happen inside your browser on a canvas. Luminance uses the Rec.601 weights 0.299R + 0.587G + 0.114B, and each look only changes those channel weights and the tone curve. Grain is deterministic noise hashed from pixel coordinates, so the same settings always produce the same result.
ready to use.
- Visible firstKeep the input and result positions clear.
- Results firstPut the main number up front and keep the process secondary.
- Less to askNo sign-up or extra information before using the tool.
How the black and white photo converter works
Turning a photo monochrome is not the same as dropping saturation to zero. How heavily you weight red, and where you push the midtones, decides whether the sky blows out white or the foliage clumps into black. When a black and white shot feels wrong, the way the colour was removed is usually the reason.
This tool draws your own photo in 15 monochrome looks at once, so you compare real results instead of reading filter names. Choose a look, work the brightness, contrast, grain and vignette sliders, flip back to the colour original to check what you lost, then export PNG or JPG. The file is never uploaded; everything runs in the browser.
Removing colour is really a weighting decision
Three channels collapse into one brightness value, and the ratio you use changes everything.
- Set saturation to zero and red and green land on nearly the same grey, so the edge between them disappears
- Human vision is most sensitive to green, which is why the standard formula gives green 0.587
- Raise the green weight and leaves get brighter; raise the red weight and skin gets brighter
- Film photographers did exactly this with yellow and red filters screwed onto the lens
The maths this tool runs
Knowing how a number appeared lets you predict the result. Every formula here is public.
- Base luminance = 0.299 × R + 0.587 × G + 0.114 × B (ITU-R BT.601 weights)
- Each look changes those weights and the tone curve. Infrared gives green 0.8, dramatic gives red 0.35
- The order of operations is look curve, then brightness, then contrast, then grain, then vignette
- Brightness adds slider × 2.55 to every pixel; contrast computes (value − 128) × (100 + slider) ÷ 100 + 128
What separates the 15 looks
The names blur together, but there are only five families. Decide what the photo is for and the choice narrows fast.
- Neutral family — classic, soft, bright. They keep the original impression and only shift brightness
- Contrast family — film noir, high contrast, dramatic. They pull light and dark apart
- Exposure family — low key, high key. They push everything down or up to set a mood
- Texture family — silver gelatin, charcoal, newsprint. Grain and stepped tones imitate print
- Toning family — vintage, selenium tone, ink wash, infrared. Either not fully neutral or heavily re-weighted
Working through the screen in order
The left column is input and adjustment, the right column is preview and look gallery. One pass top to bottom finishes the job.
- Drop a photo into the left box or press choose file
- Scan the 15 thumbnails on the right and click the look you want
- Set brightness and contrast on the left, then add grain or vignette if the photo needs it
- Toggle the colour compare on and off to check nothing important vanished with the colour
- Pick the export format and press save
Which look suits which subject
The same look behaves very differently depending on the subject. These pairings hold up in practice.
- Portraits — soft or silver gelatin, because hard contrast exaggerates every skin flaw
- Landscapes — infrared or high contrast, which separates clouds from sky
- Architecture and streets — film noir or dramatic, which strengthen lines and shadow
- Documents and scans — newsprint, which splits text and paper into two clean steps
- Food and still life — classic or vintage, which keep texture while dropping colour
What the brightness and contrast sliders actually do
They work in different ways, and mixing them up is the quickest route to an unrecoverable file.
- Brightness adds the same amount to every pixel, so shadows recover first while highlights creep toward pure white
- Contrast spreads values away from 128, pushing bright areas brighter and dark areas darker
- A flat, hazy photo usually needs contrast rather than brightness
- Raise both hard at once and tones clip, which makes the tonal range figure shrink instead of grow
When grain and vignette earn their place
Both effects are optional. Results are better when you use them for a stated reason.
- Grain imitates film emulsion and takes the plastic edge off a clean digital file. Between 20 and 40 reads as natural
- Grain here is hashed from pixel coordinates, so the particles in the preview are the particles you save
- Vignette darkens the corners to pull the eye inward, easing in from 45% of the radius outward
- Because the falloff is proportional, portrait and landscape crops start darkening at the same relative point
- Push vignette past 60 on a casual portrait and it starts to look composited. Stop below 30
Reading the four figures under the preview
Checking numbers is faster than trusting your eye on a bright screen. All four describe the monochrome result on screen.
- Source size — the real pixel count that will be saved. The preview is only scaled down to fit the screen
- Mean brightness — average result luminance mapped to 0-100%. Most photos settle between 40 and 60%
- Contrast — the standard deviation of that luminance. Under 40 looks hazy, over 70 looks harsh
- Tonal range — the gap between the brightest and darkest pixel. Above 200 means the tones are well spread
Follow the numbers on the sample photo
Press the sample image button on screen and you can reproduce these figures exactly. Changing nothing but the look moves them a long way.
- Classic - mean brightness 54.9%, contrast 46.0, tonal range 199. Treat this as the baseline
- Soft - contrast drops to 36.8 and the tonal range narrows to 160. Gentle, but below the 40 threshold, so it reads hazy
- High contrast - contrast 67.4, tonal range 255. This is where the ends start clipping
- Infrared - the heavy green weight lifts grass and trees, pushing mean brightness to 74.0%
- Low key - the same photo drops to 34.9%. The look alone moves brightness by almost 40 points
Mistakes that keep coming back
Monochrome conversions lose information permanently. These five come up most often.
- Calling a desaturated file black and white — the red-green edges are already gone
- Raising contrast before choosing a look — clipped tones do not come back when you switch looks
- Re-importing an exported monochrome file and converting again — losses stack. Always start from the colour original
- Saving repeatedly as JPG during editing — compression damage accumulates. Work in PNG
- Judging by screen brightness alone — displays differ, so trust mean brightness and tonal range instead
Checklist before you save
Running through this list in order saves a second round of work.
- Did you toggle the colour compare and confirm that colour-only boundaries did not merge?
- Is mean brightness inside the 40-60% band?
- Is the tonal range above 180, so the photo does not read as hazy?
- On a portrait, are the highlights on skin still holding detail?
- Did you pick PNG for print or further editing, and JPG for web upload?
Frequently asked questions
Is my photo uploaded to a server?
No. From the moment you pick a file to the moment you save, every step runs in the browser on your own device. Portraits and unpublished images are safe to load.
How is this different from setting saturation to zero?
Zero saturation collapses the three channels close to a plain average, so colours with similar brightness, such as red and green, land on the same grey and the edge between them disappears. This tool uses the Rec.601 weights that match human sensitivity, and each look re-tunes those weights, so differences in colour survive as differences in brightness.
Do the 15 thumbnails match the real output?
The look and the brightness and contrast settings match exactly. Thumbnails are drawn as a 96px centre crop, so grain and vignette are left out of them. Both effects scale with image size, so judge them in the large preview.
Does grain change every time it redraws?
It does not. Instead of random numbers, the grain is hashed from pixel coordinates, so the same photo with the same settings always produces particles in the same places. What you see in the preview is what gets saved.
Should I save as PNG or JPG?
Choose PNG if you plan to print the photo or edit it again, because it is lossless and keeps every tone. Choose JPG for a blog or social post. It saves at 92% quality and usually lands under a fifth of the PNG size.
What happens to a transparent PNG?
Transparent pixels stay transparent and only coloured pixels are converted. JPG does not support transparency, so saving as JPG fills those areas with black. Save as PNG if you need to keep the transparency.
Can it handle large phone photos?
Files up to 20MB are supported. Saving processes the full source resolution, so a 40-megapixel photo comes out monochrome with no loss of detail. The preview is scaled to 1200px on the long edge, which is why the saved file is larger than what you see.
Can I load a photo that is already black and white?
Yes. A grey image simply receives the look curve plus your brightness and contrast. It is a practical way to rescue an old low-contrast scan with high contrast or newsprint.
Why are vintage and selenium tone not fully neutral?
They reproduce darkroom toning, where prints were bathed in chemicals that shifted the colour. Vintage leans warm overall, while selenium splits cool shadows against warm highlights. Use classic or high contrast when you need a strictly neutral grey.
Sources
Primary documents for the luminance weights and pixel handling.