How it works
The Tint Tool overlays a semi-transparent color layer over any image, shifting its overall hue and mood toward the tint color. A blue tint creates a cold, cinematic look. A warm amber tint creates a golden-hour sunset feel. A green tint evokes night-vision or vintage photo effects.
Tinting is used in photo editing to achieve consistent color mood across a series of images (a blog's featured images all have the same warm overlay for visual cohesion), in UI design to create dark overlay panels for text legibility, in film production for establishing shot grading, and in branding to give diverse stock photos a unified visual identity.
How to use it: upload your image. Pick the tint color using the color picker. Set the opacity (0 = no effect, 100 = solid color block, 30–50 is typically the useful creative range). Choose the blend mode: Normal (linear overlay), Multiply (darkens while tinting), Screen (lightens while tinting), Overlay (boosts contrast while tinting). Preview in real time. Download.
Blend mode guide: - Normal at 30–40%: clean, flat color overlay — the most controllable - Multiply: shadows become deeply colored, highlights stay bright — cinematic look - Screen: highlights become washed out in the tint color — high-key feel - Overlay: contrast increases and mid-tones shift toward the tint — dramatic editorial look
Dual toning: use the Tint Tool twice (stack outputs) to create a duotone — a shadow tint and a highlight tint — the classic print/poster effect.
Privacy: tint blending runs in the Canvas API. No image is uploaded.
Frequently Asked Questions
- 50–70% opacity with a dark color is the standard for header images where text is placed on top. This darkens the image enough for white text to be readable (WCAG requires a 4.5:1 contrast ratio for normal text) without completely obscuring the image. At 70% black opacity, the image is dark enough for white text at any font size.
- Normal blend at N% opacity is a straightforward color overlay — the tint color is layered at N% transparency. Multiply blend darkens the underlying image by the tint color — it preserves more image detail in the shadow areas while tinting more strongly in the midtones and highlights. For cinematic grading, Multiply is more natural.
- A true duotone (dark color in shadows, different color in highlights) requires two separate gradient map layers. This tool applies a flat color tint. For duotone, apply a dark tint on the base image, download, then apply a lighter tint with Screen blend mode on the result.
- A light-colored tint at high opacity washes out the image by pushing all values toward white. Use a darker tint color (even at 50% opacity) or reduce the opacity to 15–30%. For a color grade without washing out, use Overlay or Multiply blend mode instead of Normal.