You have a portrait or a landscape shot with thousands of gentle shade changes. The print shop wants separations, or you want a graphic poster vibe without opening desktop software. This page maps each pixel into a short list of allowed intensities so edges read clearly and colors sit in flat blocks. Upload a file, drag the level control, decide whether ramps stay soft or snap hard, then save a PNG. Your file never leaves the browser.
Drop a photo here
or browse files ยท PNG, JPG, WebP, GIF
Imagine a sunset gradient on a phone wallpaper: orange bleeds into purple across two hundred invisible steps. Posterize asks a stricter question: if you only had eight stops between dark and light for each color channel, where would each pixel land? Every red, green, and blue value snaps to the nearest allowed step. Neighbors that used to differ slightly now match, so bands appear. The effect feels like screen printing or vintage travel posters, not like a broken display.
Before: soft reflections on glass. After at six levels: readable highlights, separate midtones, a catalog-ready flat look without redrawing vectors.
Before: muddy shadows. After at ten levels with softer ramps: grit stays, but skin and pavement separate into clear zones for social crops.
The tool reads your image into an HTML canvas in the browser. Each pixel supplies four numbers: red, green, blue, and alpha. Alpha passes through unchanged so transparent PNGs stay transparent where the format allows.
You set an integer level count between two and thirty-two. The page divides the zero-to-two-fifty-five range into that many bins. In the default hard mode, each channel jumps to the center of its bin, so transitions look sharp. In softer ramp mode, the same bin index maps to a slightly different reconstruction formula so gradients keep a gentler slope while still using fewer distinct values overall.
Output is always a new raster: we do not produce vectors or spot-color plates. For extracting a small palette you palette extractor pairs well after you settle on a look. For hue shifts without level reduction, open hue and saturation instead.
Limits worth naming. Huge originals slow preview because every pixel runs through JavaScript on your device. Very wide panoramas may feel sluggish until you resize externally. CMYK files often arrive as RGB after decode, so separation logic here follows screen RGB, not ink formulas. Animated GIFs show the first frame only in this preview.
Privacy. Decoding and math run locally. No upload queue, no account, no retention on our servers because nothing gets sent.
Screen viewing forgives banding. Ink on paper punishes it. If you posterize for shirts or posters, preview at one hundred percent zoom on a calibrated monitor before you commit.
Semi-transparent edges posterize like any other channel. Expect faint halos unless you flatten on a solid background first.
Download produces PNG. If you need JPEG for email, re-encode elsewhere and watch for new compression noise around the bands you just created.
Keep the original file aside. Posterize destroys fine detail on purpose. You will not recover hidden shades from the exported PNG.
Usage, quality, and export questions specific to this page.
Everything happens in your browser with the File API and canvas. The image does not upload to Toolexe.
Skies are smooth gradients. Fewer levels mean wider flat bands. Raise the level count slightly, enable softer ramps, or soften the source gradient before posterizing.
Default mode snaps each channel to stepped values for a crisp graphic read. Softer ramps adjust the reconstruction so transitions stay a bit smoother while still using a limited set of output values.
PNG keeps lossless pixels and supports transparency. Use it for editing or print handoff. Convert to JPEG later only if you accept generation loss.
No. Editors use their own rounding, color management, and optional dithering. Expect close family resemblance, not bit-identical output. Proof on your target medium.
