PhotoRiyaHow to make a duotone
Drop a photo onto the box above. It becomes a duotone with the Sunset preset. Choose another preset, or pick your own Shadows and Highlights colours with the colour boxes. Use Contrast to push more of the picture towards one colour, and press Download.
Duotones are popular for posters, album covers, social media graphics, headers and presentations, because they give photos a strong and consistent colour identity.
How the duotone effect works
The photo is first turned into grays. Then each gray is replaced by a colour on a gradient between your two colours: the darkest parts become the shadow colour, the lightest parts become the highlight colour, and everything between is a blend.
Dark shadow colours with light highlight colours look the most natural. For a bold, graphic look, choose two saturated colours, such as deep purple and hot pink. The presets include Sepia, Sunset, Ocean, Neon, Forest, Cyanotype and Rose gold.
Tips for better duotones
Photos with a wide range of tones work best, because every tone becomes a step on the gradient. If the result looks muddy, raise the contrast. For a classic brown-toned look, see the sepia filter, and for plain grays use the black and white converter. To find colours that match another picture, use the palette extractor.
Questions people ask
What is a duotone?
A duotone is an image made from two colours only: one for the shadows and one for the highlights, with a blend between them.
How do I make a duotone from a photo?
Drop your photo onto the generator above and choose a preset, or pick your own shadow and highlight colours.
Which colours work best?
Pair a dark colour for the shadows with a lighter one for the highlights, like navy with pale blue, or purple with orange. Two similar brightnesses give a flat, low-contrast picture.
Can I use exact brand colours?
Yes. The Shadows and Highlights boxes accept any colour, and your browser's picker lets you type a hex code.
Is my photo uploaded to a server?
No. The conversion runs inside your browser tab, on your own device, and nothing is sent anywhere. That also makes it instant: there's no upload or queue.
What size is the result?
Photos are kept at their full size up to 4,096 pixels on the long side. Larger photos are reduced to that, which is still more than enough for screens and A4 prints.
Is it free?
Yes. There is no limit, no watermark and no account. PhotoRiya is open source under the MIT and Apache 2.0 licenses.
More free tools
- Sepia filter warm, old-photo tonesGive a photo a warm sepia tone with adjustable contrast and grain.
- Black and white photo converter with real colour filtersConvert a photo to black and white with colour filters, contrast and film grain.
- Color palette from image with HEX codes in a clickExtract the dominant colors of an image as HEX, RGB and HSL, with CSS and JSON export.