Black and white image
Turn any photo or image into black and white (grayscale) right in your browser. Ideal for standardizing documents, giving a photo a classic look or removing color distractions. The conversion happens on your device — the file is never sent to a server.
Drag your files here
or click to select
PNG, JPEG, WEBP
How to make an image black and white in 3 steps
Add the image
Drag the image (PNG, JPG or WEBP) onto the upload area or click to pick it. The file is read only in your device's memory.
Convert
Click process. Each pixel is converted to a shade of gray by luminance, keeping the original brightness and transparency.
Download the PNG
Download the black and white image. No copy is kept anywhere.
Why make an image black and white
Black and white conveys a sober, timeless feel. In photos, it removes the visual noise of color and highlights shapes, contrast and texture. In scanned documents, it standardizes the material and usually makes the file lighter and easier to print.
It's also useful to unify the images in a presentation or portfolio, making sure they all share the same visual identity, with no distracting tone variations.
Grey calculated the way the eye sees
Converting to black and white is not averaging the colour channels. The human eye is far more sensitive to green than to blue, so a plain average flattens the image and erases contrasts you could see.
Here grey is computed by perceptual luminance, giving each channel the weight it actually carries in perception. The result preserves the difference between a dark red and a light blue, which a plain average would turn into nearly the same tone.
Lossless, with transparency preserved
The output is PNG: no recompression, and the original’s transparency channel passes through intact. A logo with a transparent background stays transparent after going grey.
Since PNG does not compress with loss, the file can end up larger than the colour original — especially if the input was a JPG. If weight matters, compress afterwards.
Greyscale is not a 1-bit image
The result has 256 shades of grey, from white to black. That is not the same as a "pure black and white" image, where each pixel can only be one or the other — the fax look, used in scanned documents to save space.
If your goal is cutting weight for archiving, greyscale helps little in PNG. If it is aesthetic, or preparing an image for monochrome printing, it is exactly what you want.
Use cases
- Give a photo a classic black and white look
- Standardize scanned documents in grayscale
- Unify the images in a presentation or portfolio
- Highlight shapes and contrast by removing color distraction
- Prepare images for black and white printing
Frequently asked questions
Is transparency kept?
Yes. Only the color channels are converted to gray; the transparency channel stays intact.
Does the image lose quality?
No. The output is lossless PNG, so the original sharpness is preserved.
Which formats can I upload?
PNG, JPG and WEBP. The result always comes out as PNG.
General questions about the site
- Is it free?
- Yes — no sign-up, no usage limit and no watermark.
- Does it work on mobile?
- Yes, straight from your Android or iPhone browser.
- Do I need to install anything?
- No. No software, no extensions.
- Is my file sent to a server?
- On tools marked as local, no — the file never leaves your device. Only three tools use a server, and each says so on its own page.
How this works inside, and what the site does not do, is on the About page.