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Black and White Converter

Turn color photos into black and white or grayscale.

Your files never leave your device.

When to use it

Black and White Image converts colour pictures to grayscale, pure black and white, or sepia. Use grayscale for timeless portraits and moody street photos, black and white for clean signatures, stamps and scanned documents that print sharply, and sepia for a vintage, warm look on family photos or invitations.

How to make an image black and white

  1. Tap Choose image, or drag a JPG, PNG, WebP or HEIC file onto the box.
  2. Pick a Style: Grayscale, Black & white or Sepia.
  3. For Grayscale and Sepia, adjust Contrast to make the image punchier or softer.
  4. For Black & white, adjust the Threshold. Lower makes more of the picture white, higher makes more of it black.
  5. Choose Save as and press Download image.

A worked example

You need a clean signature image for documents, but your phone photo of a signature on paper has a grey background and a slight shadow. Open it, choose Black & white, and start at threshold 128. The paper turns white but a few faint strokes break up, so raise the threshold to 150 until the strokes are solid. Save as PNG: the result is crisp black ink on pure white, perfect for Sign PDF or a document.

Tips for great black-and-white photos

  • Look for contrast and texture: strong light, shadows, patterns and faces work well without colour.
  • Add a little contrast to grayscale photos that look flat.
  • Use sepia sparingly; it suits portraits and old-fashioned themes more than landscapes.
  • For documents, good, even lighting matters more than the threshold value.

Choosing the right style

  • Grayscale: photos, portraits, artistic shots.
  • Black & white: signatures, sketches, QR codes, scanned forms, stencils.
  • Sepia: vintage looks, heritage projects, invitations.

Printing tip

If you print documents in black and white anyway, converting signatures and stamps here first gives you a preview of how they’ll print, and avoids grey, blotchy results from colour scans.

Common mistakes

  • Using Black & white on photos, which loses all the mid-tones and looks harsh.
  • A threshold that’s too low for pencil or faint pen, making lines disappear.
  • Saving signatures as JPG, which adds grey smudges around the ink; use PNG.
  • Overdoing contrast, which loses detail in shadows and highlights.

Private by design

Your image is converted in your browser and never uploaded.

Sign a document with the clean signature in Sign PDF, make edges soft with Round Image Corners, or reduce the file size with Compress Image.

Frequently asked questions

What's the difference between Grayscale and Black & white?

Grayscale keeps every shade from black to white, like a classic black-and-white photo. Black & white makes each pixel either pure black or pure white, which suits signatures, line drawings and scanned text.

What does Threshold do?

In Black & white mode, it decides which pixels become black. Lower values make more of the picture white; higher values make more of it black. Around 128 is a good start; raise it if faint pen strokes disappear.

Can I make a photo look old?

Yes. Choose Sepia for the warm brown tone of early photographs, and lower the Contrast slightly for a faded look.

Will converting reduce the file size?

A little, and Black & white images saved as PNG are often very small because they contain only two colours.

Is my image uploaded?

No. The conversion happens in your browser.

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