Duotone Effect
Remap a photo onto two colours: one for the shadows, one for the highlights, with preset pairs, a balance control and an intensity mix. The poster look, in your browser.
or browse filesdrop an image here or paste
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Remap a photo onto two colours: one for the shadows, one for the highlights, with preset pairs, a balance control and an intensity mix. The poster look, in your browser.
or browse filesdrop an image here or paste
A duotone replaces every tone of a photo with a blend of two colours: the darkest parts take the shadow colour, the brightest take the highlight colour, and everything in between is the mix. It is the look of music streaming covers, festival posters and bold web headers - a photo reduced to two colours that still reads perfectly. Pick a preset pair, or choose any two colours yourself, move the balance to decide where the picture tips from one colour to the other, and lower the intensity for a gentler tint over the original. The result is computed from the original pixels and downloaded at full resolution; nothing is uploaded. Duotone, duo tone, duocolor, two-tone filters - the same effect under every name.
The classic duotone pairs a deep, dark shadow colour with a bright, saturated highlight: navy and gold, purple and pink, forest and lime. A dark shadow keeps the picture's contrast; a light highlight keeps the faces and details readable. Two colours of similar brightness give a flatter, more graphic result; a shadow colour lighter than the highlight inverts the picture like a negative. Black and white as the pair is a plain grayscale, which makes the tool a quick monochrome converter too - see the black and white converter for thresholds and grain. For a single colour washed over the photo rather than a two-tone remap, the colour overlay and tint tools do that.
Balance is a curve on the picture's brightness before the colours are applied. Sliding it toward the highlights brightens the midtones, so more of the picture takes the highlight colour; toward the shadows, the shadow colour spreads. It is the control that fixes a portrait that came out too dark or a sky that swallowed the picture. Intensity blends the duotone with the original photo: at 60 to 80 the colours tint the photo while its own hues remain, a softer look for backgrounds and social posts.
The effect runs in your browser on the original pixels and the download is the full-size result; there is no signup, no watermark and no limit. The page also works for a batch of pictures one after another with the same settings kept.
An image made of two colours: one for the shadows, one for the highlights, with the tones between them blended. It comes from two-ink printing and is now a common graphic style for covers and posters.
Yes. The Shadows and Highlights pickers take any colour, including one picked from the photo with the eyedropper. The presets are shortcuts.
Move Balance toward the highlights so more of the picture takes the lighter colour, or choose a lighter highlight colour. A very dark photo may also want the intensity lowered.
Yes. Lower the Intensity slider; at 50 the photo keeps half of its original colour under the two-tone.
Yes. Transparency is kept in the PNG download; only the visible pixels are recoloured.
No. Everything runs in your browser and the file stays on your device.