What is an emboss filter?

An emboss filter makes an image look pressed into metal, paper, or stone. Edges turn into raised ridges with a lit side and a shadowed side, and flat areas turn into a smooth gray surface. It works best on logos, text, coins, and photos with strong shapes.

Tool description

Open an image and the tool shows it as a gray relief lit from the top left. Change the angle to move the light, and the strength to make the relief deeper or flatter. Turn on "Keep colors" to shade the original colors instead of turning them gray. Compare with the original using the before and after slider, then download the result at full size.

Features

  • Light from any direction
  • Adjustable relief strength
  • Gray relief or the original colors with relief shading
  • Keeps transparency, and cutouts stand out from the background

How it works

The tool treats brightness as height: light parts of the image are high ground, dark parts are low. At every pixel it measures how the surface slopes, then lightens the slopes that face the light and darkens the ones that face away. Flat areas have no slope, so they become middle gray, or keep their color with "Keep colors". A light blur first keeps the relief smooth and stops noise from turning into grain.

Tips

  • Turn the light around by 180 degrees and raised shapes look carved in instead.
  • Logos and text emboss cleanly. Busy photos look better with a lower strength.
  • Light from the top left looks most natural, since that's where people expect light to come from.