Features

Grayscale

Convert images to black-and-white using perceptually-weighted luminance — preserves transparency, avoids muddy average-of-RGB results.

What it does

The Grayscale tool converts a colour image to a single-channel monochrome version. There are several different ways to do this conversion and the wrong one produces noticeably worse results, so the tool defaults to the perceptually-correct option:

Luminance-weighted (Rec. 709) — the default. Computes brightness as 0.2126·R + 0.7152·G + 0.0722·B. Matches how the human eye perceives brightness — greens look bright, blues look dark, the result is balanced.

Alternative modes available:

Average of RGB — simple (R + G + B) / 3. Tends to look dark and muddy because it overweights blue (which the eye perceives as dim).
Lightness (HSL) — (max + min) / 2. Tends to wash out reds.
Channel pick — keep only one of R, G, or B. Useful for film-style monochrome (red channel gives lighter skies; green gives smoother skin; blue gives moody high-contrast).
Desaturate to grey — preserves the original luminance per pixel but zeros the chroma. Equivalent to a "saturation = 0" filter pass.

Preserving transparency

The output keeps the full alpha channel of the source. A transparent PNG of a person in colour becomes a transparent PNG of a person in black-and-white — no white background introduced.

When grayscale is better than the BW filter preset

The Image Editor's filter presets include B&W, B&W Soft, and B&W Hard. Those are richer than this tool — they apply curves, grain, and toning on top of the grayscale conversion. Use them for finished cinematic black-and-white looks.

Use the Grayscale tool when you specifically need:

A truly neutral grayscale conversion for documentation / scientific use.
A monochrome version with no artistic adjustments at all.
A quick way to remove colour from a logo without opening the editor.

Output format

You can save the result as PNG (lossless), WebP, or JPEG. The single-channel data is encoded as RGB with R=G=B for maximum compatibility — JPEG / PNG don't have a single-channel mode in the strict sense, but the resulting file is no larger than a true 1-channel encoding because the encoder collapses identical channels efficiently.

Privacy

Conversion happens in-browser. Files are never uploaded.

Image filters — B&W, Sepia, and Duotone presets
Manual image adjustments
Format converter

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