Deep Fried Photo Effect

Give any photo that crunchy, crispy "HDR" look with this tool. You've probalby seen it before and always wanted to do it to your pics but just didn't know how... Well, fear not cause I got you! No need to pay Adobe for access to photoshop, or get a PHD in Digital Graphics so you can do it in The Gimp (I still got love for The Gimp tho). Oh and this works direcly in your browser so your photos never get uploaded to anywhere and this won't leave a watermark. Have fun!

Drop a photo here or click to choose a file, or paste from your clipboard

Shadows/Highlights

Lift shadows

Pull down highlights

Radius

Detail (High Pass, Hard Light)

Amount

Radius

Midtones & color

Darken midtones

Saturation boost

Blend

Effect strength

Export

Format

How to deep fry a photo

Drop a photo onto the editor, paste one from your clipboard, or click to choose a file.
As soon as you load it up, it gets dropped into the grease and FRIED HARD. Tweak it however you want with a live preview. Hold Hold to compare to see the original.
Click Download to save it at full size as a JPEG or PNG.

How it works

It's the classic Photoshop "fake HDR" recipe, cooked up and served right to you:

Shadows/Highlights: Brightens or darkens each spot based on how light its surroundings are, not the pixel alone, like Photoshop's Shadows/Highlights or HDR Toning. Dark areas open up, bright areas come down, and strong edges pick up glowing halos. Radius sets how big those halos get.
Detail: A greyscale High Pass copy blended Hard Light, which piles on the crunchy micro-contrast. A small radius gives fine, crispy texture; a larger one gives chunkier detail.
Darken midtones: A greyscale copy with its midtones darkened, blended Multiply, so the flattened image gets some depth back.
Saturation boost: Pushes the colors for that over-cooked look.
Effect strength: Fades the finished result over your original photo: 100% is fully fried, 0% is the untouched original.

Frequently asked questions

What does "deep fried" mean?

It's a meme term for images pushed so far with contrast, sharpening and saturation that they look crispy, glowing and over-processed. This tool lets you do it with an extreme HDR-style tone-mapping stack.

Are my photos uploaded?

No. Everything happens in your browser using WebAssembly, so your photos never leave your device.

Is it free?

Yes. It's free to use with no sign-up and no watermark on what you download.

Which file types can I use?

Any image your browser can open (JPEG, PNG, WebP, GIF, and HEIC in Safari). Photos larger than 4096 pixels on a side are scaled down to fit.