Sepia filter.
Warm brown, old print.

What a sepia filter does, and why it still looks right.

Sepia is a brown monochrome tone. The word comes from the pigment made from cuttlefish ink, and in photography it describes prints toned from neutral grey to warm brown. A traditional sepia print was made by bleaching a black and white silver print and redeveloping it in a toning bath, which converted the silver into a more stable brown compound. Many old albumen and gelatin prints also aged toward brown by themselves. A sepia filter reproduces the look on a digital photo: it throws away the original colors, keeps the brightness of every pixel, and maps dark to light onto a ramp from deep chocolate to cream.

This free sepia tone effect does that mapping on your own pixels, not by laying a brown overlay on top. Because it works from brightness, a bright sky stays pale and a shadow stays dark, so the picture keeps its shape instead of turning into a muddy wash. Four looks give you different prints, and the strength slider fades between the original color photo and the full sepia tone, which is the quickest way to find how much brown a picture can take.

Sepia suits photos where mood matters more than color: portraits, old streets, buildings, weddings and anything you want to feel remembered rather than current. It is closer to a black and white filter than to color, but warmer and softer, and it is narrower than a vintage filter, which keeps color and adds fade and a warm cast. If you are deciding between sepia and black and white, our black and white photo guide explains how neutral grey changes a picture. Sepia is the same idea with a warmer tone. For more texture, add grain to the photo or read about film grain.