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Make a Photo Black and White — Free Online

Turn a color photo into grayscale or pure black and white with an adjustable threshold. Transparency is kept and the PNG is created in your browser.

Convert in your browser · No sign-up

One static JPG, PNG, WebP or AVIF · up to 20 MB and 24 megapixels

How to use

  1. Choose a JPG, PNG, WebP or AVIF image.
  2. Pick Grayscale, or Pure black & white and adjust the threshold.
  3. Apply, check the preview and download the PNG.

Example

Grayscale: RGB (200, 120, 40) → gray 131 (0.2126 R + 0.7152 G + 0.0722 B).
Threshold 128: gray 131 → white, gray 90 → black.

Details and limitations

Grayscale keeps every shade of gray using the Rec. 709 luminance weights, the same desaturation most photo editors use. Pure black & white turns each pixel black or white at the chosen threshold — useful for stamps, stencils and scanned text.

Transparency is kept. The result is a PNG at the original size; metadata is not copied. The image is processed in your browser.

FAQ

What threshold should I use?

Start at 128. Raise it if too much becomes white (thin lines disappear); lower it if the image turns too dark.

Can I turn a black and white photo back into color?

No. Color information is removed; keep your original file.

Format references

Tool page updated: