Posterize Image
Cut a photo down to a few flat tones for a bold poster look, with the number of levels on one slider.
or browse filesdrop an image here or paste
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Cut a photo down to a few flat tones for a bold poster look, with the number of levels on one slider.
or browse filesdrop an image here or paste
Posterizing throws away the gentle shading in a photograph and keeps only a handful of flat tones, which is what gives silkscreen prints, campaign posters and pop art their look. Open a picture here and one slider does it: drag Levels down and the picture collapses into bands of solid colour, drag it up and the shading comes back. Everything runs in your browser, the download is rendered from your original at full size rather than from the preview, and there is no signup or watermark.
Posterization is the same thing an image editor calls Posterize, and this is a posterizer done in a page instead of a program: each colour channel is snapped to a number of evenly spaced levels, so five levels means five reds, five greens and five blues, and the picture is built from what those combinations make.
Two levels is the extreme: every channel goes fully on or fully off, and a colour photo becomes eight poster colours. Three to five is the classic printed poster, where a face keeps its shape but the skin turns into two or three flat shapes. Eight and above starts to look like the photograph again, with the bands visible mostly in skies and other smooth areas.
| Levels | What it looks like |
|---|---|
| 2 | Eight hard colours, a screen print or a stencil |
| 3 to 5 | Poster art: flat shapes, strong edges, faces still readable |
| 6 to 8 | Stylised photo, banding clearly visible in skies and skin |
| 10 to 16 | Close to the original, useful for a subtle print look |
Turn Black and white on and the same slider counts grey tones instead of colours per channel, which is the posterized portrait look: two tones for a stark stencil, four or five for something closer to a woodcut.
A posterize is a staircase laid over the tones a picture actually has, so two photographs of the same scene can band completely differently. Under More options there are the two controls that fix the usual disappointments:
Poster prints and gig flyers, T-shirt and sticker artwork that has to be cut down to a few inks, comic and pop art panels, silhouettes and stencils for cutting machines, book covers, presentation backgrounds, and anywhere a photograph needs to read as a graphic rather than as a photograph. Two levels in black and white is also the quickest way to get a clean stencil out of a portrait.
If you want a different route to the same family of looks, Threshold Image Filter takes it all the way to pure black and white, the 8bit Converter reduces the whole palette rather than each channel and adds pixel blocks, and Color Grading shifts the mood without flattening anything. The site carries hundreds of other image utilities besides these; see what is live right now on the all tools page.
Posterizing an image means reducing it to a small number of flat tones. Instead of a smooth gradient from dark to light, the picture is built from a few solid steps, which is how a screen printed poster works: one flat area of ink per colour. The name comes from exactly that printing limit.
Three to five for poster art, where the picture stays recognisable but every area becomes a flat shape. Two for a stencil or a hard silkscreen look. Eight or more if you only want a stylised photograph with visible banding. The slider updates the picture as you drag, so it is quicker to try than to calculate.
Because its tones are bunched together, so most of the picture falls into one or two bands. Open More options and raise Contrast, which spreads the tones out before the levels are applied. If the result is speckled rather than muddy, raise Smooth instead: that is sensor noise being amplified by the banding.
Yes. Turn Black and white on and the levels count grey tones. Two levels gives a pure black and white stencil, three or four keeps the shape of a face while staying graphic.
Yes. Transparent pixels stay transparent, so a PNG cut out from its background is still cut out after posterizing. Download as PNG or WebP to keep it, since JPG has no transparency.
No. The picture is decoded, posterized and saved on your own device, and nothing is sent to a server. There is no account and no watermark.