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Add a sepia filter to a photo

The warm brown of an old print, applied at full resolution on this device.

Give photos a warm sepia tone like an old print, in your browser. It is free, needs no account and adds no watermark, and your files are not uploaded: everything runs in your browser on your device. The size limit is your device’s memory, and phones hold less; give the page a short while after one visit to save itself for offline use, and then it works offline.

Drop photos for a sepia toneor click to choose files. Batches welcome.
    Working…

    Done

    Your files are processed on this device and never sent to a server. Reload the page to clear everything from memory.

    Sepia is the brown tone of photographs from the late 1800s and early 1900s, which came from treating the silver print with a pigment that made it last longer. Today it is a shorthand for old, warm and nostalgic: family history projects, wedding invitations, vintage-style menus and posters.

    This filter turns each photo into a tonal image and maps the tones onto a ramp from deep brown shadows to creamy highlights, rather than just tinting the colours, so skin, sky and fabric all sit in the same period palette. The preview shows the first photo as it will come out.

    It works on the full-size file, keeps the resolution, and runs entirely in your browser, which matters for the kind of photos that end up in a family archive.

    How it works

    1. Drop one or more photos.
    2. Check the preview of the first photo.
    3. Press Apply sepia and download the results.

    In your browser, not on a server

    Your browser decodes each image (libheif or the Squoosh decoders step in for HEIC, AVIF and JPEG XL) and draws it on a canvas in your tab. Each pixel’s brightness is computed with the Rec. 709 weights, the way the eye weighs red, green and blue. High contrast stretches the tones to the full range; pure black and white picks the split point with Otsu’s method, which finds the threshold that best separates ink from paper. The browser then saves the canvas as JPG, PNG or WebP.

    Compared with upload-based tools: Photo filter sites upload your pictures to apply a filter a phone could do offline, and many add a watermark or keep the images. Here the photos stay on your device, the limit on how many you convert at once is your device’s memory (phones hold less), and the result is not recompressed more than once.

    Verify it yourself. Give the page a short while after one visit to save itself for offline use, then turn off Wi-Fi or switch to airplane mode and run the tool again. Or open your browser's developer tools (F12, or Cmd-Option-I on a Mac), pick the Network tab, and watch it while you convert. The panel above does the same count for you.

    Questions

    Can I make it look more or less aged?

    This is a single classic sepia tone. For a harsher, grainier look, try High contrast first and then apply sepia to that result.

    Is the original photo changed?

    No. You download a new copy; the photo on your device stays as it was.

    Why did old photographs turn brown?

    Sepia toning replaced the silver in a print with silver sulfide, which is far more stable in air, so toned prints lasted decades longer than untoned ones. The warm brown was a side effect that became a style, and later a visual shorthand for the past.

    What works best with sepia?

    Portraits, architecture, landscapes and anything with texture: wood, stone, fabric, weathered faces. Photos that rely on colour, such as a sunset or a bowl of fruit, lose their point. Modern details like cars and signs give the vintage look away, so crop them out first if you can.

    Can I print it?

    Yes. The photo keeps its full resolution. Printers render the brown tones well on matte or cream paper, which adds to the old-print feel.

    Is the file uploaded anywhere?

    No. There is no server in this process. The page is a static file and the work is done by code running inside your browser tab. Give the page a short while after one visit to save itself for offline use; then you can turn off Wi-Fi and it still works.

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