What is the difference between bloom and halation?

Bloom is light spilling from the bright parts of the picture into their surroundings, in their own colour — the soft dreamy glow. Halation is narrower and warm: a red-orange fringe around bright edges, the way film's red layer catches light scattered back through it. You can use either alone or both together.

How do I make a neon glow?

Raise Neon edges. The photo's edges are found, drawn in the colour you pick and bloomed, while the rest of the picture is dimmed a little so the lines read as light. Pink, cyan and green on a dark photo look most like a sign.

Why does nothing glow on my photo?

Bloom only starts on pixels brighter than the Threshold. On a dark or flat photo, lower the threshold until the bright areas start to glow, or raise Size so the glow travels further from them.

Will the glow be the same size in the saved file?

Yes. The glow is computed on a reduced copy and sampled back up, so its reach is a fraction of the picture rather than a number of pixels — the same on the strip, on the preview and in the full-size file.

Is this an AI effect?

No. It is a measured construction: a brightness threshold, a blur at a fixed fraction of the frame, an edge map from the luminance gradient, and a screen blend that can only add light.

Glow Effect for Photos — Bloom and Neon

A look: your photo, a different colour

This is a look: your photograph is kept, and light is added on top of it. Bloom lets the bright areas spill into their surroundings; halation adds the red-orange edge glow of film; neon edges trace the picture’s outlines in one colour and let them glow, for the look of a lit sign.

Strength, tone and texture from the lab apply on top, and the texture panel has its own lighter bloom and halation if you only need a touch of either on another look.

The controls

Bloom: How much light spills from the highlights.
Threshold: How bright a pixel must be to glow.
Size: How far the glow travels, as a fraction of the picture.
Halation: The warm fringe around bright edges.
Neon edges: Edges drawn in a colour you choose and bloomed; 0 is off.

Where it falls short

A glow can only add light, so a bright, already-white photo has little room left to glow into.
Neon edges follow every edge the gradient finds — busy textures like foliage turn into a lot of neon. Lower Neon edges or pick a simpler photo.
Bloom softens fine detail near the highlights; keep Size low on a portrait.

The strip, the preview and the saved file run the same code on the same settings, with every size a fraction of the picture, so the file you download is the frame you approved.

Nothing is uploaded

There's no upload step on this page — your picture is decoded in the tab, drawn to a canvas, and gone the moment you close it. The filter runs in this tab, on your device, and the file is written here too.

Questions

What is the difference between bloom and halation?: Bloom is light spilling from the bright parts of the picture into their surroundings, in their own colour — the soft dreamy glow. Halation is narrower and warm: a red-orange fringe around bright edges, the way film's red layer catches light scattered back through it. You can use either alone or both together.
How do I make a neon glow?: Raise Neon edges. The photo's edges are found, drawn in the colour you pick and bloomed, while the rest of the picture is dimmed a little so the lines read as light. Pink, cyan and green on a dark photo look most like a sign.
Why does nothing glow on my photo?: Bloom only starts on pixels brighter than the Threshold. On a dark or flat photo, lower the threshold until the bright areas start to glow, or raise Size so the glow travels further from them.
Will the glow be the same size in the saved file?: Yes. The glow is computed on a reduced copy and sampled back up, so its reach is a fraction of the picture rather than a number of pixels — the same on the strip, on the preview and in the full-size file.
Is this an AI effect?: No. It is a measured construction: a brightness threshold, a blur at a fixed fraction of the frame, an edge map from the luminance gradient, and a screen blend that can only add light.

Related on this site

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