Sepia effect generator.

Sepia was a darkroom toning process: silver in the print was converted to a brown compound, which made it warmer and longer-lasting. Prints from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries have that look. This tool applies the brown hue over the photo's lightness, which is the same visual result.

There is no single value; period prints range from a deep #704214 to a light #cca47d. The preset is #cca47d, a warm tone that doesn't darken the image. Drag the picker toward a darker brown for a stronger, older look.

Grayscale removes all color and leaves black, white and gray. Sepia keeps the same lightness and adds a warm brown hue, which reads as old and warm where grayscale reads as neutral. Both keep the full detail of the photo.

Yes. A color photo is mapped to the brown hue over its own lightness, so a bright modern photo comes out as a warm-toned print. Lower the strength to leave a trace of the original color.

Each pixel is converted to hue, saturation and lightness. The tool keeps the pixel's lightness and replaces its hue and saturation with the tone color's, so dark areas stay dark, bright areas stay bright and everything shifts to one color. That is why the result keeps its depth instead of looking like a flat wash of color.

Strength blends the toned pixels with the original ones. At 100 the image is fully toned; at 50 half the original color shows through, which reads as a tint rather than a monochrome; at 0 nothing changes. Lower it for a subtle cast, raise it for a full single-color image.

The picker opens with eight swatches: Sepia (#cca47d), Slate (#6b7280), Ocean (#2563eb), Teal (#0d9488), Forest (#15803d), Sunset (#ea580c), Rose (#e11d48) and Violet (#7c3aed). Any of them is a starting point; drag in the picker or type a hex code for your own tone.

Fully transparent pixels are skipped and stay transparent. Partly transparent pixels get the new tone and keep their alpha value, so a logo or icon with a transparent background comes out toned on the same transparent background.

No. Your browser decodes the file and does the pixel work with its Canvas API, and the page makes no request with it. You can load the page, go offline and keep working; the download is written from memory on your device.

No. The Sepia effect generator is free and opens without a sign-in, an account or an install.

Nothing. The Sepia effect generator holds your input in the page's memory, so closing or reloading the tab clears it, and it saves nothing in this browser.

Up to 100 MB per file, the limit the tool states under its drop area. A larger file is refused with a plain message instead of being decoded.

No, it takes one file at a time. If you drop or choose several, only the first is used; run the tool again for the next one.

The edit is written as a PNG because PNG stores every pixel exactly, with a full alpha channel, so the result can be edited again without a second round of loss.

No. The browser decodes the image and the tool writes a new file from its pixels, so camera EXIF, GPS position and text chunks in the original are not copied into the result. Keep the original file if you need them.

No. The result has the same width and height in pixels as the source.

Closest to the Sepia effect generator: PNG color tone changer, Grayscale with a color tint, Photo color filter, Film grain generator. Each opens on its own page, free and in the browser.

The Sepia effect generator is one of 47 in its group. The group's page, /tools/png, lists them all.

The tool is free. Its interface is built from shadcn.io's own components (Button, Input, Slider and the rest of the registry under /ui), which come in React, Vue, Svelte and Solid. Pro adds the blocks and templates for the product around it.