Layers of fine ink lines that build up in the shadows, like a pen drawing or an old engraving. Worked out from your photo, not traced by a model.
Open the editor with this effect
Crosshatching is how artists made tone before printing could reproduce grey. One set of parallel lines for a light shade, a second set across it for a darker one, then a third and a fourth for the deepest shadows. You see it in engravings on old banknotes, in pen and ink illustration, and in the portraits that newspapers printed before photos were possible.
Light areas get no lines at all, so the paper shows through as the highlight.
Midtones get a single direction of lines. As the tone darkens, a second layer crosses the first at an angle.
Shadows get three or four layers, until the lines close up into near solid ink. The eye reads the density of lines as darkness, the same way it reads halftone dots.
Bitgrain works out the tone of each area from your photo and lays down the right number of line layers there. It is a fixed algorithm, not an AI drawing over your image.
Portraits with directional light work best, because the shadows give the hatching something to build up in.
Buildings, statues and objects with clear form look like engravings straight away.
Busy, evenly lit scenes tend to turn into a uniform grey mesh. Raise the contrast or crop in closer to give the lines a shape to follow.
Open the editor from this page and the crosshatch is already applied. Drop in your own photo.
Change the line size to set how fine the drawing is. Smaller lines look like an engraving, larger ones like a quick pen sketch.
Pick an ink and paper colour, such as sepia or blue line, for a printed or drafted feel.
Export PNG for posters, covers and prints.
It gives a similar look. Real engraving cuts lines into metal that follow the shape of the subject, while this effect lays straight hatching layers by tone. On most photos it reads as an engraving or a pen and ink drawing.
The PNG export is pure ink on paper, which many engraving tools accept. For plotters you would need to trace it into vectors in another tool.
No. The lines are generated by a classical algorithm from the brightness of your photo, on your own device.