How to make a photo black and white

A black and white photo is not literally two colors — it is a grayscale image, made of the shades of gray between pure black and pure white. Turning a color photo monochrome means throwing away the color information while keeping the brightness of each pixel.

The direct way to do that is to desaturate the image: reduce its color intensity all the way to nothing. The EditItAll photo editor does this with its Hue/Saturation control, alongside Levels, Curves and color balance for the tonal fine-tuning that good black and white usually needs.

In the photo editor:

• Open the editor and load your image (PNG, JPG or WebP).
• Open Hue/Saturation and drag Saturation all the way down to zero — the color drains out and you are left with grayscale.
• Open Curves or Levels and add a little contrast, because desaturated photos often look flat and gray.
• Check that the whites are bright and the blacks are deep without losing detail.
• Export as PNG or JPG.

It all runs on your device — go offline after the page loads and it still works, so your photo is never uploaded.

Removing color is the easy half. What separates a flat gray photo from a striking one is contrast and tonal range. After desaturating, use Curves to add a gentle S-shape — lifting the highlights and deepening the shadows — so the image has real blacks and clean whites instead of a muddy middle. Small adjustments go a long way; push too far and you will clip detail out of the brightest and darkest areas.

If you only want part of the photo in black and white, work on a selection or a separate layer — see using layers in a photo editor.

Exporting flattens your edits into a single image, so the saved black and white file has no color left to bring back. Always keep your original color photo, or reopen your in-progress edit from Recent files before exporting, in case you want a different look later. There is no automatic 'black and white' AI preset here — you make the desaturation and contrast choices yourself, which is also what lets you control exactly how the result looks.