Free tool

Risograph Filter

Coarse dots in one loud ink. The duplicator look that zines, gig posters and art-school prints are made of.

Looked after by Sponge, a sponge.

A risograph is a duplicator, not a printer: it burns a stencil and pushes soy ink through it, one colour at a time. The dots are coarse, the ink sits on top of the paper rather than in it, and the colours are fluorescent in a way CMYK cannot reach.

So the recipe is a big halftone dot, an ink colour that is nobody's idea of accurate, and the same multiply that printing does. The misregistration and the roller marks are the other half of a real riso; this gives you the dot and the ink.

What this look is made of: Halftone at 13px spacing with a 5px dot, rotated 30 degrees, in riso pink, multiplied at 42%. Every one of those is a control below, so this is a starting point rather than a filter.

Choose an image

Drop an image or click to upload

JPG, PNG, WebP, GIF, SVG, BMP

or try one of ours:

Looks

Base Color
#0a0a0a

Add Layer

How it works

  1. 1Add an imageJPG, PNG, WebP, GIF, SVG or BMP.
  2. 2Press a lookNine of them. Each sets the pattern, the colour, the blend and the opacity at once.
  3. 3Layer a backgroundStack patterns with their own colour and opacity.
  4. 4ExportPNG or JPEG, at 1x, 2x or 3x.

Questions

What makes something look risograph rather than just printed?
The dot is coarser than a press would use, and the ink colour is one a press would not choose — fluorescent pink, bright blue, a green that glows. Riso inks are spot colours, so the look is one loud flat colour doing all the work rather than four inks blending into a photograph.
Can I get the two-colour riso look?
Not in one press here — this applies one screen. You can get close by exporting once in pink, changing the colour and angle, and exporting again, then laying the two over each other in any editor with a multiply blend.
What angle should the dots be at?
Anything but zero. A screen at 0 or 90 degrees reads as a grid and fights the picture; 15 to 45 degrees is where a dot screen stops being visible as a pattern and starts reading as tone. This look sits at 30.

Other looks in this tool

Newsprint EffectFilm Grain OverlayEtching EffectLaid Paper TextureCRT ScanlinesScreen Print EffectBlueprint EffectPhotocopy EffectAll nine, one editor →
Add texture and depth to any image

Nine named looks — newsprint, risograph, etching, film grain, CRT — each one press. Underneath them are thirteen hand-made patterns, five blend modes, and every parameter the look set, still yours to move. Everything runs in your browser, so your images never leave your device.

13 texture presets

Crosshatch, Woven, Linen, Halftone, Diagonal, Dot Grid, Scanlines, Noise, Fabric, Herringbone, Checker and Grid.

Background layers

Stack pattern layers with their own colour, opacity and visibility.

High-quality export

2x resolution as PNG or JPEG, for social, print and client work.

This tool is looked after by Sponge.Soaks up every texture it meets. Squishy, and delighted about it.

More Free Tools

YouTube Thumbnail PreviewPodcast Guest Release FormCrop Video to VerticalImage ConverterReels Cover CreatorProject Folder Generator
View All Free Tools

Shorts by Slice

From the team behind these free tools

One video. A week of posts.

Upload an episode and get back the moments worth posting, cut and captioned.

  • Reads the whole episode, then picks the excerpts worth posting
  • Captions burned in and framed vertical, ready to post
  • Seven days free, no card
Try Shorts by Slice