Photo effects online

These are rebuilds: each one throws away the photograph’s pixels and remakes the picture out of something else — graphite lines, ink dots on a rotated screen, flat colour regions, art pixels from a short palette, characters. That is different from a look, which keeps the photograph and changes its colour; the looks live on Photo filters.

Pick a frame on the strip and its settings open on the right. Each effect also has its own page with the reading for that mode, listed below.

• HalftoneDots on a rotated screen, one plate or four, with the angles a press would use.
• DuotoneTwo colours and the ramp between them, rebuilt on every change to either end.
• DitherError diffusion and ordered matrices, at palettes from one bit upwards.
• PixelateSquare or hexagonal blocks, each one flat, with optional palette quantisation.
• PosteriseContinuous tone reduced to measured channel levels, with optional pre-dither.
• ASCIIA character grid that comes out as a picture or as a text file you can paste.
• GlitchRepeatable scan bands, displacement and channel separation.
• PaintingSmoothed regions, reduced colour steps and measured contour weight.
• MosaicMean-colour tiles with editable grout width and colour.
• Edge detectA Sobel luminance gradient map with threshold and inversion.
• Blur stylesSoft, horizontal and vertical averaging with a stated radius.
• Photo to pencil sketchPencil, ink-line or colour sketch built from your photo's tones and edges.
• Cartoonize a photoFlat colour, a short palette and ink lines — a classical construction, not AI.
• Image to pixel artReal art pixels, real palettes, enlarged crisp by whole numbers.

Rebuilds need pixels to build from. On a photo under about 800 pixels across, halftone, dither and ASCII have little to work with and the lab says so. Small faces turn into a few lines in a sketch and a few blocks in pixel art; crop closer first. None of these is a learned style: “anime” or “3D” cartoons need a model this site does not run.

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 effect runs in this tab, on your device, and the file is written here too.

What is the difference between a photo effect and a filter?

On this site a filter (a look) keeps your photograph and changes its colour; an effect (a rebuild) remakes the picture out of something else — pencil lines, dots, flat blocks, characters. Both are on the same strip, under different tabs, and both have a strength slider where the picture allows it.

Are these AI effects?

No. Every effect here is a classical construction from your photo's own tones, edges and colours — a blur and a colour dodge for a sketch, edge-preserving smoothing and a short palette for a cartoon, measured cells for a halftone. The same settings always give the same picture.

Which effect should I use for a profile picture?

Cartoon and pencil sketch read best at small sizes because they simplify. Halftone and dither need room — at avatar size their dots and patterns turn back into grey.

Can I save an effect as a vector?

Halftone, mosaic and pixel art can be saved as SVG, with every dot, tile or pixel a shape. The others are pictures made of pixels and save as PNG, JPG or WebP.

• Photo filtersThe 41 colour looks by family, previewed live on your photo, each one opening the lab already set.
• Photo presetsThe built-in looks with their numbers, saved recipes and shareable settings strings.
• Batch photo filterOne look, saved recipe or settings string on many photos, in one ZIP.

Rendered on your computer, not on a server.