GIF Effects for Color, Mood, and Style

What each effect does and what the strength changes

For the color looks (Grayscale, Sepia, Vintage, Polaroid, Warm, Cold, Dramatic and Duotone), 100 % applies the full effect and lower values blend it with the original, so 1 % is barely visible. For the other effects the value sets a size, spacing or amount, as described below. Figures describe the effect at 100 % unless stated otherwise.

Grayscale and Sepia

Grayscale removes color, Sepia applies the classic brown tone. Only 100 % gives a fully black-and-white or fully sepia GIF; at the default 80 % a trace of the original colors remains.

Vintage and Polaroid

Mild looks built from a partial sepia tint. Vintage uses 35 % sepia with +10 % contrast and +20 % saturation. Polaroid uses 20 % sepia, +15 % contrast, +10 % saturation and a slightly brighter image.

Warm and Cold

Warm raises saturation by 30 %, adds a 25 % sepia tint and rotates all hues by −8°. Cold rotates hues by +18°, adds 10 % saturation and brightens the image a little.

Dramatic

Raises contrast by 40 % and saturation by 20 %, darkens the image slightly and darkens the corners a little.

Soft Glow

Lays a blurred copy of each frame (2–10 px blur) over the original with a screen blend at 45–90 % opacity. Highlights bloom and the whole frame gets brighter, noticeably so even at low values, while the original detail stays visible underneath.

Neon

Builds a glow layer from the edges of shapes, tints it toward pink and purple and blends it over the frame. The result is much brighter with a strong pink-purple cast, even at 1 %; dark scenes change the most.

Duotone

Maps the brightness of every pixel to a gradient from dark navy (#1b1d3a) in the shadows to pink (#ff6ec7) in the highlights. The strength blends between the original colors and the duotone. The two colors are fixed.

Glitch

Shifts the red and blue color channels sideways in opposite directions by 1–9 px (7 px at 80 %) and raises contrast by up to 12 % and saturation by up to 35 %. The shift is identical on every frame, so you get a steady color fringe rather than a flicker.

Scanlines

Draws dark, semi-transparent horizontal lines on every 3rd pixel row up to 50 % and on every 2nd row above that, like an old CRT screen. Higher values also make the lines darker.

Posterize

Reduces each color channel to a few brightness levels: 12 at the lowest setting, 4 at the default 80 % and 2 at 100 %. Gradients turn into flat, poster-like areas.

Blur

Here the number is the blur strength in px (Gaussian sigma), not a percentage. Around 2–5 px softens the image, 10 px and more is a heavy blur, and the default 80 leaves little more than smeared color.

Sharpen

Applies an unsharp mask to brightness only, with the amount rising from 0.5 to 2.0 across the range. As with any unsharp mask, high values can create bright halos along edges.

Pixel

The number is the block size in px, with a minimum of 2 px, so the default 80 gives 80 × 80 px blocks. Higher values give bigger, coarser blocks; the GIF keeps its width and height.

Negative

Inverts the colors. 100 % gives a full negative; lower values blend the inverted colors with the original.

Vignette

Darkens the edges and corners while the center stays unchanged. Higher values spread the effect further toward the middle; at 100 % the corners become very dark.