Image Tint Effects
FreeApply Colorize (single-color tint) or Duotone (two-color gradient map) effects to an image with a live preview.
Runs entirely in your browser. Your image is never uploaded anywhere.
Click to choose an image, or drag and drop one here
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What this tool does
Applies two classic tinting effects to a photo: Colorize (tints the image toward a single color while preserving its brightness detail) and Duotone (maps shadows to one color and highlights to another, the bold two-color look popularized by Spotify's marketing), each with a live preview and PNG download.
How It Works
Colorize converts each pixel to HSL, replaces its hue and saturation with your chosen tint color's, keeps the original lightness, converts back to RGB, then blends the result with the original pixel by your chosen strength percentage. Duotone instead computes each pixel's brightness (luminance) on a 0 to 1 scale using the standard luma formula, then linearly interpolates between your shadow color (at luminance 0) and highlight color (at luminance 1) to find the output color, an optional Invert Mapping setting swaps which end of that scale gets which color.
Problems it solves
- Giving a photo a consistent color mood or brand tint while keeping its detail and contrast intact.
- Creating a bold, high-contrast two-color poster or album-art style treatment from any photo.
- Matching a photo's color scheme to a specific palette for a themed gallery, presentation, or design.
Frequently asked questions
›How is Colorize different from a simple color overlay?
A flat color overlay just blends a solid color on top of your photo uniformly. Colorize instead keeps each pixel's original brightness (lightness) and only replaces its hue and saturation with your chosen color's, so shadows stay dark, highlights stay light, and the photo's tonal structure and detail remain visible, tinted rather than covered.
›Why do black and white areas stay black and white in Colorize?
Pure black has 0% lightness and pure white has 100% lightness, and at those two extremes, the HSL color model produces black or white regardless of what hue or saturation you specify, there is no color to show at zero or full lightness. This is what keeps true shadows and highlights neutral even at full colorize strength.
›What is a duotone effect, and where does the name "Spotify style" come from?
Duotone (or a gradient map) replaces every shade of gray in an image with a color chosen from a gradient between two colors: the darkest pixels become your shadow color, the lightest become your highlight color, and everything in between blends smoothly. It became strongly associated with Spotify after the company used bold two-color photo treatments across its marketing and playlist covers.
›What does "Invert mapping" do in Duotone?
It swaps which end of the brightness range gets which color, dark areas of the photo get your highlight color and light areas get your shadow color, flipping the overall look without needing to manually swap the two color pickers.
›Is my photo uploaded anywhere?
No. Both effects are computed and rendered entirely in your browser using the HTML canvas API. Nothing is sent to a server.
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