About velvetmade.app
Twenty-three photo effects and a handful of image tools, all running in your browser. Your photo stays on your own machine, and you can use every effect without an account.
What this is
velvetmade.app is a photo effects studio that lives in a browser tab. Twenty-three effects — instant film, risograph, halftone, newsprint, bleach bypass, duotone, reeded glass and the rest — plus a mesh gradient generator, and the boring but useful stuff: a resizer, a compressor and format converters.
The effects copy real photographic and printing processes instead of just being generic filters. That turns out to matter a lot. A risograph print looks the way it does because the ink layers land slightly out of register on a coarse screen, and an effect that reproduces those specifics is convincing in a way that a colour preset never quite manages.
How it works
Everything happens on your own machine. Your image gets loaded into an HTML5 canvas or a WebGL context, the effect runs there, and the result comes back out — the same pipeline a desktop editor uses, just with the browser doing the work.
Which leads to the bit worth saying plainly: your photograph is not uploaded. There is no server doing the processing, so there is nothing to upload it to. Speed comes down to your own hardware, and really large files are limited by your device memory rather than by a queue or a rate limit.
What happens to your photos
Nothing leaves your device while you are working. If you are signed in and save a full-resolution download, the finished result — not your original — gets stored in your private account folder so you can grab it again later. That file is encrypted with AES-256 and deleted automatically after 30 days.
Nothing is used for training, sold, or handed to anyone. The privacy policy spells it out in full, and analytics run under Google Consent Mode with storage switched off until you say otherwise.
What costs money, and what does not
Running an effect costs us nothing, because it runs on your computer rather than ours. So applying and previewing any effect is free, and the image tools — resizing, compression, format conversion — are free with no limits whatsoever.
The part that does cost something is storing and serving a full-resolution result. Signing up gives you 3 free full-resolution downloads. After those, they come out of a credit pack — one credit per download, packs start at 10. There is no subscription and nothing renews on you.
There are no ads on the site and no data gets sold. That is a decision, not a stage we have not got to yet.
Frequently asked questions
What is velvetmade.app?
velvetmade.app is a free photo effects studio that runs in your browser. There are 23 photo effects — film, halftone, print, colour and light treatments — plus a mesh gradient generator and image tools like a resizer and format converters. Everything runs in the browser, so there is nothing to install and no desktop software involved.
Is velvetmade.app free?
Mostly. Every effect is free to apply and preview, and the image tools — resizing, compression, format conversion — are free with no limits at all, batch mode included. Signing up gives you 3 free full-resolution downloads of effect results; after that, full-resolution downloads come from a credit pack.
Do I need an account to use velvetmade.app?
Not for the effects or the tools. An account is only needed to download an effect result at full resolution, and signing up includes 3 of those free. The image resizer and the converters need no account at all.
Are my photos uploaded to a server?
Not by default. Effects and tools run in your browser using HTML5 canvas and WebGL, so your original photo is processed on your own device and never sent anywhere. If you are signed in and save a full-resolution download, the finished result — not your original — is stored in your private account folder, encrypted with AES-256, and deleted automatically after 30 days.
Can I use velvetmade.app images commercially?
Yes. You keep the rights to your own photographs, and the effects make no claim over the result, so you can use the output in client work, products and commercial projects. Full terms are on the license page.
Does velvetmade.app use AI to generate images?
No. Every effect is a fixed image process — colour transforms, halftone screens, grain, blur, refraction — applied to the photo you give it. Nothing is generated, invented or swapped out, so what comes back is always your own photograph with a treatment on top.
What browsers does velvetmade.app work in?
Any current one: Chrome, Edge, Firefox and Safari on desktop, and the same browsers on phones and tablets. The effects need JavaScript and HTML5 canvas, both standard since 2011. Big images are limited by your own device memory rather than by any server.
Who runs velvetmade.app?
velvetmade.app is an independent project — not a division of anything bigger — funded by its own credit purchases rather than by advertising or selling data. Questions of any kind reach an actual person through the contact page.
Start here
Grab an effect from the full list, or start with a collection: old and vintage, halftone and print, street photography or album covers. If you came for the tools, the image resizer and the WebP to JPG converter need no account. The blog explains the processes behind the effects.