Mood Photo Filter: Try 20 Aesthetic Photo Filters on One Photo and Save at Full Resolution
A mood photo is a picture whose color and brightness have been pushed in one direction so the whole frame shares a single feeling. A cafe photo turns warm and soft, a dawn landscape turns hazy and cool, and a snapshot meant to look like an old memory fades to yellow. This is what the filters and presets in phone editing apps do, and most of them are simply a saved bundle of a few values such as exposure, color temperature, contrast and saturation.
The tool above applies 20 of those bundles to a single photo. Once you pick a photo, the stage shows the original and the mood version on either side of a divider, and the mood board below renders all 20 moods from the same photo at once. Tap a tile to apply that mood to the stage. Change the strength or the adjustments and the tone curve and the listed values change with them. The first screen is an 1800 × 1200 px illustrated landscape with Golden Hour applied, and your photo is never sent to a server.
Why give a photo a mood
A mood does not make a photo more accurate. It pulls the feeling of the picture toward one side. It helps most in cases like these.
- Matching the tone of a feed or album: photos taken on different days under different light look like one set when they share a mood and strength. This tool keeps your chosen mood and adjustments when you open a new photo.
- When the light was disappointing: a cafe shot that came out blue under fluorescent tubes suits a warm mood, and a flat midday landscape can be lifted with a mood that adds contrast and color, such as Golden Hour.
- Bringing out a place or season: the same sea feels like the cold hour after sunset in Blue Hour and like a sunny midday in Warm Afternoon. The color adds a second statement about when the photo was taken.
- Softening portraits: moods such as Dreamy and Soft Beige lower contrast and lift the blacks slightly, which makes skin texture and shadows less prominent.
How to use it
- Press Choose a photo, or drag a photo onto the workspace. A copied photo also opens with paste (Ctrl+V, ⌘+V).
- Pick a mood among the 20 tiles on the board. Each tile shows your current photo with that mood applied.
- Drag the divider on the stage left and right, or select it and move it with the arrow keys, to compare with the original. The left side of the divider is the original.
- Use Strength to weaken the whole mood or return it to its starting value. At 100% the values are exactly those in the table.
- Add or remove a little exposure, temperature, contrast, saturation, fade and vignette to suit the photo. Reset returns only the strength and the adjustments and keeps the mood you picked.
- Choose a save format (JPG, PNG or WebP) and press Save. On a phone, Share sends the result straight to another app.
Adjustment values by mood
The table below lists the values each mood applies at 100% strength. Exposure, temperature, tint, contrast and saturation run from −100 to +100. Fade, Whites down and vignette run from 0 to 100. Shadow color and highlight color are a hue angle on the color wheel (0° red, 120° green, 240° blue) plus an amount of tint. Lowering the strength reduces every value by the same ratio, so Golden Hour at 50% becomes temperature +35 and saturation about +13 (12.5).
| Category | Mood | Exposure | Temperature | Tint | Contrast | Saturation | Fade | Whites down | Shadow color | Highlight color | Vignette |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Urban | Urban Dark | −22 | −15 | 0 | +35 | −45 | 4 | 0 | 210° · 35 | – | 30 |
| City Lights | 0 | +5 | 0 | +25 | +10 | 0 | 0 | 180° · 55 | 35° · 45 | 15 | |
| Street | −6 | 0 | 0 | +22 | −30 | 28 | 8 | 200° · 20 | 40° · 15 | 22 | |
| City Pop | +10 | −8 | +14 | +12 | +28 | 10 | 0 | 195° · 40 | 330° · 35 | 0 | |
| Café & Life | Café Latte | +2 | +35 | +6 | −18 | −22 | 14 | 5 | 25° · 45 | 38° · 25 | 14 |
| Brunch | +28 | +14 | 0 | −22 | +10 | 6 | 0 | – | 45° · 20 | 0 | |
| Warm Afternoon | +8 | +50 | 0 | −8 | +12 | 4 | 0 | 30° · 20 | 40° · 40 | 10 | |
| Cozy Home | −4 | +55 | +8 | −30 | −14 | 16 | 8 | 15° · 40 | 32° · 30 | 25 | |
| Natural Light | Golden Hour | +8 | +70 | +10 | +10 | +25 | 0 | 0 | 15° · 30 | 38° · 60 | 18 |
| Blue Hour | −18 | −60 | +6 | +12 | +5 | 6 | 0 | 228° · 50 | 250° · 20 | 22 | |
| Dawn Mist | +18 | −20 | 0 | −50 | −35 | 30 | 10 | 205° · 35 | 190° · 10 | 0 | |
| Overcast | +2 | −14 | 0 | −25 | −30 | 12 | 10 | 200° · 20 | – | 0 | |
| Minimal | Clean White | +35 | −8 | 0 | −6 | −22 | 6 | 0 | – | – | 0 |
| Soft Beige | +12 | +28 | +4 | −28 | −50 | 16 | 6 | 30° · 30 | 35° · 20 | 0 | |
| Faded Black | 0 | 0 | 0 | +12 | −25 | 48 | 12 | 210° · 12 | – | 10 | |
| Monochrome | 0 | 0 | 0 | +15 | −100 | 18 | 4 | – | – | 15 | |
| Emotional | Melancholy | −12 | −35 | 0 | +8 | −50 | 18 | 8 | 220° · 50 | 200° · 15 | 30 |
| Dreamy | +20 | +6 | +16 | −45 | −15 | 26 | 4 | 285° · 35 | 340° · 35 | 0 | |
| Film Fade | 0 | +10 | −10 | −14 | −28 | 34 | 12 | 170° · 40 | 45° · 30 | 14 | |
| Nostalgia | +2 | +40 | 0 | −20 | −35 | 24 | 10 | 30° · 30 | 42° · 45 | 24 |
There are four moods in each category, 20 in all. Tint, Whites down, and the shadow and highlight colors have no slider in the Adjust panel and exist only inside the moods.
What each adjustment does
Each pixel changes in this order: exposure and temperature, then contrast, fade, saturation, shadow and highlight color, and finally vignette. Exposure and temperature multiply the amount of light (linear light) rather than the value you see on screen. The rest are computed on the displayed value (sRGB). The conversion between the two is the sRGB formula published in W3C CSS Color 4: divide by 12.92 below 0.04045, and raise to the power 2.4 above it.
| Value | At its limit (±100 or 100) | Calculation |
|---|---|---|
| Exposure | Twice the light (+100) or half (−100), 1 EV | Linear light × 2exposure/100. Highlights above 0.9 are compressed toward 1 slowly so they do not blow out to white. |
| Temperature | Red × 1.35 and blue × 0.65 (+100), the reverse at −100 | In linear light, red is multiplied by 1 + 0.35 × temperature/100 and blue by 1 − 0.35 × temperature/100. |
| Tint (moods only) | Green × 0.85, red and blue × 1.10 (+100) | Plus leans toward magenta, minus toward green. |
| Contrast | +100: an S-curve. −100: black 0 → 64, white 255 → 191 | Plus blends in 2x² for x < 0.5 and 1 − 2(1 − x)² above it. Minus narrows the range around 0.5. |
| Fade | Black 0 → 64 (at 100) | Lifts black by 0.25 × fade/100 and shrinks the remaining range to match. |
| Whites down (moods only) | White 255 → 209 (at 100) | Lowers white by 0.18 × value/100. |
| Saturation | −100: black and white. +100: color differences doubled | Luminance Y = 0.2126R + 0.7152G + 0.0722B (ITU-R BT.709); each channel's difference from Y is multiplied by 1 + saturation/100. |
| Shadow and highlight color | At an amount of 100, a 30% push toward that color near black (or near white) | Moves toward the chosen hue minus its luminance, weighted by (1 − Y)² for shadows and Y² for highlights. Brightness stays nearly the same and only the color shifts. |
| Vignette | Corners 55% darker (at 100) | The inner 30% of the distance from center to corner is untouched, and from there to the corner the image darkens smoothly. |
How black, gray and white change
The easiest way to see which way a mood leans is to look at what happens to the gray steps. The table below shows, at 100% strength, what black (0), middle gray (128) and white (255) become for each mood, written as R·G·B. These are the same values as the line drawn on the tone curve in the Adjust panel.
| Mood | Black (0) | Gray (128) | White (255) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Café Latte | 34·17·5 | 143·131·120 | 247·241·222 |
| Golden Hour | 14·0·0 | 158·129·100 | 255·254·199 |
| Blue Hour | 0·3·33 | 106·121·147 | 222·241·255 |
| Faded Black | 28·31·35 | 140·141·142 | 249·249·249 |
| Monochrome | 11·11·11 | 133·133·133 | 253·253·253 |
| Dreamy | 53·39·57 | 152·137·146 | 243·221·229 |
- Café Latte lifts black to 34·17·5, which gives the shadows a brown cast, and lowers white slightly toward yellow at 247·241·222.
- Golden Hour turns middle gray into 158·129·100, so red ends up 58 higher than blue. It is the warmest of the 20 moods.
- Blue Hour goes the other way: middle gray falls to 106·121·147 and leans blue.
- Faded Black makes black 28·31·35, so the photo no longer contains a true black. That is where the matte feel comes from.
- Monochrome always has three equal values, so it has no color, lifts black to 11 and lowers white slightly to 253 (gray 128 becomes 133).
Choosing a mood for your photo
| Photo | Moods to try first | When fine-tuning |
|---|---|---|
| Cafe and food | Café Latte, Brunch, Warm Afternoon | If food looks too yellow, lower the temperature a little. In a dim room, raise the exposure. |
| Landscape and travel | Golden Hour, Blue Hour, Dawn Mist, City Pop | If the sky blows out to white, lower the exposure. If the color is too much, drop the strength to 70 to 80%. |
| Portraits and selfies | Dreamy, Soft Beige, Cozy Home | If skin looks red or orange, lower the temperature. If the face is dark, reduce the vignette. |
| Products and interiors | Clean White, Soft Beige, Overcast | If the product color must stay true, change only a little exposure and contrast instead of saturation. |
| Night and city | City Lights, Urban Dark, Blue Hour | If dark areas clog up, add a little fade to bring the shadows back. |
| Old-photo look | Film Fade, Nostalgia, Faded Black, Monochrome | If the faded look is weak, add fade. If it is too muddy, raise the contrast. |
Common mistakes
- Adding an effect the mood already has: Film Fade already contains fade 34 and Whites down 12. The Fade slider in the Adjust panel stacks on top of that, so raising it a lot on a faded mood turns the whole photo muddy gray.
- Opening a saved photo and applying a mood again: the same correction is applied twice, so color and fade double in strength, and JPG loses a little quality on every save. To change it again, open the original and start over.
- Choosing from the small tiles alone: each tile is the center of the photo cropped to the tile shape (3:2 or square) and drawn small, so depending on the photo the top and bottom or the sides are missing. After you choose, move the divider on the stage and check the parts that matter, such as faces and sky.
- Always using 100% strength: the table values are set so the difference is easy to see and can feel heavy on some photos. For many photos, 60 to 80% looks more natural with the same mood.
Limits and cautions
- The moods are adjustment values defined by this tool's own formulas. They are not copies of any app's paid presets or filters, and typing the same numbers into another app will not give the same result.
- Photos are computed in 8 bits per channel, 0 to 255. A strong mood on smooth areas such as sky can show stair-step bands (banding). If that happens, lower the strength.
- A photo larger than 16,777,216 px (about 16.7 million pixels) in area is scaled down to that area with its proportions kept, then saved. MDN notes that iOS devices limit canvas size to 4,096 × 4,096 px, and this tool uses that area (16,777,216 px) as the save limit on every device. A very long panorama with one side over 32,767 px (16,383 px for WebP) is also scaled down to that length.
- Photos are converted to sRGB for the calculation, so very saturated colors in a wide-gamut (Display P3) photo may come out slightly paler. Files over 60 MB are not opened, and HEIC photos open only in browsers that can read HEIC, such as Safari.
Sources
Reference date 2026-10-20. The luminance coefficients, the sRGB conversion formula and the canvas size limit were checked against the sources below on that day, and none of them changes from year to year. The mood values and the adjustment calculations are this tool's own.
- 01ITU-R BT.709-6 (06/2015) Parameter values for the HDTV standardsSection 3.2, luma formula E′Y = 0.2126 E′R + 0.7152 E′G + 0.0722 E′B, used for the luminance in saturation and color splitting
- 02W3C CSS Color Module Level 4, 19 Sample code for Color ConversionsThe conversion between sRGB and linear light (0.04045, 12.92, 0.055, 2.4), used for exposure and temperature
- 03MDN Web Docs, <canvas> Maximum canvas sizeThe 4,096 × 4,096 px canvas limit on iOS devices, the basis for the saved-size cap
Frequently asked questions
What does a mood filter change in a photo?
Each mood has set values for exposure, temperature, tint, contrast, saturation, fade, whites down, shadow color, highlight color and vignette, and they are applied to every pixel in turn. Golden Hour, for example, uses temperature +70, saturation +25 and a highlight color (orange, 38°) of 60 to make the photo warm and rich. The table of adjustment values by mood in the article lists all 20.
What happens if I lower the strength to 50%?
Every value of the mood shrinks by the same ratio. Golden Hour at 50% strength applies half values: temperature +35, saturation about +13 (12.5) and highlight color 30. Values you set in the Adjust panel, such as exposure and temperature, are added on top of that regardless of strength.
What is the difference between Fade and Whites down?
Fade lifts black toward gray. At Fade 100, black (0) becomes 64, which gives a matte look. Whites down does the opposite and lowers white, so at 100 white (255) becomes 209. Faded moods such as Faded Black and Film Fade use both.
Is the saved photo at the original resolution?
A photo whose width × height is 16,777,216 px (about 16.7 million pixels) or less is saved at its original size. A 4032 × 3024 px phone photo (about 12.19 million pixels) comes out as is. A larger photo is scaled down with its proportions kept to fit the iOS canvas limit (4,096 × 4,096 px), and the result line shows the saved size first. A panorama with one side over 32,767 px (16,383 px for WebP) is also scaled down to that length.
Is the photo I upload stored on a server?
No. Opening the photo, applying the mood and creating the file all happen inside this browser, and the photo is never sent to a server. When you close the page, the photo you opened is gone too.
Will the same values in Lightroom or VSCO give the same result?
No, they will not look identical. Names such as exposure, temperature and contrast here only tell you which way the photo moves, and each program uses its own formulas. Use the values in the table to recreate a tone in this tool, and treat them as a rough direction in other apps.
How do I match the tone of my Instagram feed?
Settle on one mood with its strength and adjustments, then change only the photo and save each one. Your chosen mood and adjustments stay when you open a new photo. For photos with different brightness, adjust the exposure alone and they will line up in the same tone.
Does the saved photo keep location data (EXIF)?
No. The saved file is a new image drawn on a canvas, so EXIF data such as shooting location and device name is not carried over. The photo's rotation is applied as you see it on screen when it is saved.