Tone and masks

Grade your photo like a darkroom print with the tone panel: light, white balance, curves, a color mixer and color wheels for the whole photo, plus masks that let you grade one area on its own and decide where the effect shows.

The adjust sliders are quick, look-wide knobs. The tone panel is where you shape the photo itself before dither, halftone or any other effect runs over it. Because the effect reads the graded photo, a small change here (lifting the shadows, warming the highlights) changes how the dots, lines and characters land.

Opening the panel

You need a photo loaded first.

Desktop: click tone (the sun icon) in the bottom toolbar, between adjust and export.
Mobile: tap tone in the top row of the bottom bar.

On desktop the panel opens on the right of the canvas. On mobile it opens as a sheet over the bottom of the screen. Click tone again, the close button, or press Escape to close it. The tone button stays highlighted while any grade or mask is in use, so you can tell at a glance that the photo has been graded.

The tone panel keeps working while a film grade from grade is on. The film grade is applied on top of your tone work.

What are you adjusting?

The row at the top of the panel decides what every slider below it changes.

Choice	What the sliders change
whole photo	The entire photo. Selected when the panel opens.
A mask, such as mask 1	Only the area that mask covers.
+ mask an area	Adds a new mask and selects it.

The heading above the sliders always says which one you are editing: "adjustments for the whole photo" or "adjustments for mask 1 only". Each mask keeps its own complete set of settings, so you can brighten a face, cool the sky and leave everything else alone.

Light

Slider	Range	What it does
exposure	-2 to 2	Brightens or darkens the whole tonal range, in stops. +1 doubles the light.
highlights	-100 to 100	Lifts or pulls back the bright tones without moving the darks.
shadows	-100 to 100	Opens up or deepens the dark tones without moving the brights.
whites	-100 to 100	Moves the white point. Positive values make more of the photo pure white.
blacks	-100 to 100	Moves the black point. Positive values lift the blacks into a faded, matte look.

Tip: Dithering and halftone turn tone into dot density. Pulling shadows up and highlights down gives the effect more midtones to work with, which usually means more detail in the final print.

White balance

Slider	Range	What it does
temperature	-100 to 100	Negative is cooler and bluer, positive is warmer and more amber.
tint	-100 to 100	Negative leans green, positive leans magenta.
vibrance	-100 to 100	Boosts or mutes color, working hardest on dull colors so skin and already strong colors don't go garish.

Curves

Curves give you precise control over tone. The graph runs from shadows on the left to highlights on the right. The dashed diagonal is the untouched photo.

Pick rgb to shape the overall brightness, or red, green or blue to shape one color channel.
Click anywhere on the graph to add a point, then drag it. Dragging up brightens that part of the range, dragging down darkens it.
Double click a point to remove it. The two end points can move up and down but always stay at the edges.
Each curve holds up to 10 points. reset returns the selected channel to a straight line.

A gentle S shape (shadows down a little, highlights up a little) adds contrast. Lifting the far left end of the rgb curve gives faded, film-like blacks.

Color mixer

The color mixer adjusts one family of colors at a time. Click one of the eight swatches (red, orange, yellow, green, aqua, blue, purple, magenta), then use:

Slider	Range	What it does
hue	-100 to 100	Shifts that color toward its neighbors, up to 30 degrees around the color wheel.
saturation	-100 to 100	Makes that color stronger, or fades it to gray at -100.
luminance	-100 to 100	Makes that color lighter or darker.

Neighboring colors blend smoothly, so nudging orange also moves the reds and yellows close to it. Grays and near grays are left alone. A swatch gets a ring once you've changed it.

Color wheels

The three wheels tint the shadows, midtones and highlights separately, the classic film grading move.

Drag inside a wheel to choose a tint. The direction picks the color and the distance from the center sets how strong it is. The number under the wheel is the strength.
Double click a wheel to clear it.
balance moves the split between shadows and highlights. Negative values give more of the photo to the highlight tint, positive values give more to the shadow tint.

Teal shadows with warm highlights is the usual starting point for a cinematic look.

reset grade at the bottom of the panel clears every tone setting for whatever you are editing.

Masks

A mask is an area of the photo with its own grade. Click + mask an area to add one. It's named mask 1, mask 2 and so on, and it's selected straight away so the sliders now change only that area.

Note: A new mask covers the whole photo until you draw an area. With show area in red on, the whole preview turns red at first. That's expected. Click draw area next.

The mask card

When a mask is selected, a card with its settings appears above the sliders.

Control	What it does
Name	Click to rename the mask.
Eye	Hides the mask without deleting it. A hidden mask is struck through in the row at the top.
Bin	Deletes the mask.
show area in red	Tints the area this mask covers in red on the live preview. On by default. The tint never appears in exports.
area	Shows what the area is made of: brush, a gradient, both, or the whole photo.
draw area	Opens the area editor.
narrow it down	Limits the area by brightness or color. See below.
invert	Flips the area, so the mask covers everything except what you drew.
feather	Softens the edge of the area, 0 to 100, default 20.
strength	Fades the whole mask, 0% to 100%. At 50% the mask's grade is applied at half strength.
keep effect here, remove effect here	Choose remove effect here to clear dither, halftone or whatever effect you're using from this area and show the graded photo instead.

Drawing the area

draw area opens a larger view of your photo with these tools:

Tool	How to use it
brush	Paint over the part you want to adjust. Set the size with the slider, 10 to 240.
erase	Paint to take parts out of the brush area.
linear	Drag from where the adjustment should be full strength to where it should fade out. Great for skies and floors.
radial	Drag from the center outward to set the size. The center is full strength and the edge fades off. Great for faces and spotlights.

Red shows the area as you work. A dashed line shows the gradient. Brush and gradient add together, so you can drag a radial gradient and then paint in a few extra spots. Drawing a new gradient replaces the old one. clear brush and clear gradient remove one part without touching the other. Click apply to save the area.

Narrowing it down

After drawing, you can keep only part of the area:

by brightness keeps the parts of the area whose brightness falls between from and to, as a percentage from black to white. softness fades the edges of that range. Set from 0% to 50% to work only on the shadows.
by color keeps the parts that match a color. Click the swatch to choose it, or pick to sample a color from anywhere on screen (Chrome and Edge). range sets how close a color has to be, softness fades the edges. Matching is by hue, so a blue sky is picked up in both its light and dark parts, while grays are ignored.

Brightness and color work together, and both can apply on top of a brush or gradient. With nothing drawn, they narrow down the whole photo.

How masks stack

Bitgrain applies your work in this order:

The adjust sliders (contrast, brightness, saturation, hue).
The whole photo grade.
Each visible mask, in the order you added them. A later mask sees the result of the ones before it.
The main effect, such as dither or halftone, plus any film grade, haze and palette, all working from the graded photo.
Any remove effect here areas, showing the graded photo through the effect.
Print finish.

Undo, presets and exports

Whole photo grade is part of undo and redo, travels with recipe links, is kept when you apply a preset or a random look, and is applied in batch processing.
Masks belong to the photo you drew them on. They aren't part of undo, recipe links or batch processing. Loading a new photo clears painted brush areas, but keeps gradients and brightness and color settings.
Exports include the grade and every visible mask, in PNG, WebP, JPEG, HDR and traced SVG. ASCII exported as SVG text uses the plain effect without masks.