Is grayscale the same as black and white?
In everyday speech, yes — a “black and white photo” is a grayscale photo. Technically, black and white means only two colors. This tool gives you both.
Free tool · runs in your browser
Make an Image Black and White
Convert a photo to grayscale or pure black and white. Free, no sign-up, and your image never leaves your device.
Making an image black and white means removing its color and keeping only how light or dark each point is. This converter offers both meanings of “black and white”: grayscale, which keeps every shade of gray in between, and pure black and white, which turns each pixel either fully black or fully white — the look of a stencil, a fax or a clean document scan.
How to make an image black and white
- 1
Add your image
Choose a JPG, PNG or WebP, drop it on the box, or paste a screenshot with Ctrl+V / ⌘V.
- 2
Choose grayscale or pure black & white
Grayscale suits photos. Pure black & white suits text, line art and anything you will cut, print or engrave.
- 3
Adjust the threshold
In pure mode, move the slider: lower values keep more white, higher values make more of the image black.
- 4
Download
The file keeps its original format and size.
Why a good grayscale is not just an average
Averaging red, green and blue makes a pure blue sky look as bright as a pure green field, which it does not to the eye. This converter weights the channels the way screens and the human eye do — the Rec. 709 luma weights used for sRGB images: 21% red, 72% green and 7% blue. Greens and yellows come out light, blues and reds come out darker, and the photo keeps the contrast you saw in color.
When to use pure black and white
Pure mode applies a threshold: every pixel brighter than the slider value becomes white, every darker one becomes black. It is the right choice when the output must contain no gray at all:
- Signatures and stamps you want to place on a document without a gray box around them.
- Stencils, vinyl cutting and laser engraving files.
- Cleaning up a phone photo of a printed page so the text is crisp for printing.
- Line drawings that you plan to trace into a vector.
Tips for better results
For document photos, start with the threshold around 140–170: paper is rarely pure white in a photo, and a slightly higher threshold pushes it to clean white while the text stays black. For portraits, stay in grayscale — a threshold destroys skin tones. If a grayscale photo looks flat, brighten it first with the brightness tool and then convert.
Imagelier’s main tool
Need to change the text in an image?
Converting a flyer or a scanned notice? If some of the wording is out of date, the editor can change it while keeping the background. Imagelier erases the old words, rebuilds the background and sets the new text at the original size, weight and color — no Photoshop needed.
Questions
Can I turn a black and white photo back into color?
No. The color information is gone once removed; bringing it back requires AI colorization, which this tool does not do. Keep your original file.
Does it keep transparency?
Yes. Transparent areas of a PNG or WebP stay transparent; only the colors are changed.
Is my photo uploaded?
No. The conversion runs in your browser on your own device.
Updated October 3, 2026 · Written by the Imagelier team