Soft tonal washes with crisp inked lines on top, like brush and ink on rice paper. Choose your own ink and paper colours.
Open the editor with this effect
Ink wash painting works with one material at different strengths. A loaded brush gives near black, a wetter brush gives soft grey, and the paper itself is the brightest tone in the picture. A good ink wash version of a photo keeps that economy: a few washes of tone, a confident line on top, and plenty of untouched paper.
In traditional brush painting the wash describes mass and light, and the line describes form. They are usually applied separately, and they do not have to agree perfectly. That slight mismatch is a big part of the charm.
Bitgrain builds the effect in the same two layers. The wash is the photo simplified into a small number of smooth tonal steps. The line is drawn on top from the important edges in the image.
Because they are separate, you can have a loose, soft wash with sharp lines, or a heavy, detailed wash with barely any line at all.
Wash tones sets how many grey levels the wash uses. Two or three gives a bold, graphic painting. Six or more gives a softer, more photographic result.
Line detail decides how many edges become ink. Keep it low for a few strong strokes, raise it to pick up texture in bark, hair or fabric.
Bleed lets the wash creep past the edges, like wet ink running along paper fibres. A little makes it feel painted rather than printed.
Ink and paper colours are free choices. Black on warm white is classic. Sepia on cream feels like an old sketchbook, and white on dark grey makes a moody night version.
Landscapes with layered depth, like mountains fading into mist or trees in front of water, are the natural subject. The wash handles the distance and the line handles the foreground.
Still life and architecture work well when there is strong directional light.
Portraits can be beautiful but need restraint. Keep line detail low so the face does not fill with small marks.
Open the editor from this page and the ink wash effect is already on. Drop in your photo.
Set wash tones first to find the overall mood, then adjust line detail, then add bleed to taste.
Pick your ink and paper colours. Try a warm paper before deciding on pure white.
Export as PNG, or place the export in a studio page to add a title or a border for a print or a cover.
It is inspired by sumi-e and other brush and ink traditions. It simplifies the photo into a few wash tones and draws ink lines on top, but it is an algorithm, not a painter, so treat it as a starting point.
Yes. Ink and paper colours are both editable, so you can go from black on white to sepia on cream or any pair you like.
Use fewer wash tones, lower the line detail and raise the bleed. That combination gives broad washes with a few confident strokes.
No. It runs a classical image processing pipeline in your browser. The same photo and settings always give the same result.