Convert an Image to Black and White, Greyscale or Sepia
Drop the colour out of a photo — properly weighted, not averaged.
Drop a file here
or click to choose a file
Runs on your device Your file is processed by your own browser and is never uploaded to a server.
Short answer
An image can be converted to greyscale in a browser by replacing each pixel's colour with its luminance. Weighting the channels correctly matters: human vision is far more sensitive to green than to red or blue, so an unweighted average turns distinct colours into the same flat grey. Sepia and a pure two-tone black and white are variations on the same single pass over the pixels.
At a glance
| Accepts | JPG, PNG, WebP, GIF, BMP |
|---|---|
| Produces | Same format as the original |
| Processing | In your browser |
| Price | Free, no limits |
| Account | Not required |
There are three different things people mean by "black and white". Greyscale keeps every tone between black and white and is what a monochrome photograph is. Sepia is greyscale tinted a warm brown, the look of an early print. Pure black and white has no greys at all — every pixel goes to one extreme or the other, which is what a stencil, a fax or a laser cutter needs.
Greyscale here uses the Rec. 709 luminance weights, the same ones a television uses to derive brightness from colour. That is why a red logo and a blue one of similar brightness still come out as visibly different greys rather than merging into one.
How to use it
- 1
Add the image
Drop in a photo, a screenshot or a logo.
- 2
Pick the treatment
Greyscale, sepia, or pure black and white with no greys.
- 3
Download it
The format and dimensions are unchanged.
Frequently asked questions
Is this the same as removing saturation?
It is very close, and for photographs the results are indistinguishable. The difference is in the weighting: this uses luminance, which reflects how bright each colour actually looks, rather than treating the three channels as equal.
When would I want pure black and white?
When the file has to become a two-colour shape — a stencil, a vinyl cut, a laser engraving, a fax, or a scanned document you want to sharpen up. Photographs generally look poor treated this way.
Does it make the file smaller?
Usually somewhat. A greyscale image compresses better than a colour one because two of its three channels now carry no information, though the file is still stored as a colour image.
Can I get the colour back?
Not from the result — the colour information is discarded, which is the point. Keep your original if you might want it.