PRIVATE BY DESIGN
A black-and-white portrait look that doesn't flatten skin
Portraits punish a heavy-handed black-and-white conversion faster than almost any other subject — skin either goes flat and gray or blows out at the first highlight. Soft Portrait is built around that problem specifically, and it pairs easily with an analog color filter simulation photographers have used on skin tones for decades.
Drop in a portrait, start from Soft Portrait, and adjust from there — still nothing uploaded.
Start from Soft Portrait
The Soft Portrait preset pulls back on contrast, eases the highlights down so bright skin doesn't clip to white, lifts the shadows so the darker side of a face keeps some detail, and adds only a light touch of grain. The result reads as a photograph, not a graphic effect — a starting point built for faces rather than landscapes.
Add a color filter for skin tone
Underneath the presets sits an analog color filter simulation — the same red, orange, yellow, green and blue filters film photographers once held in front of the lens, simulated here as a channel mix before the grayscale conversion. Green or yellow is the classic choice for a portrait: a filter traditionally used to keep skin looking even in black and white rather than blotchy.
Adjust it by hand from there
Soft Portrait is a starting point, not a fixed result. Exposure, contrast, highlights, shadows and sharpening all stay open to adjustment, and a before/after slider lets you check the edit against the original face as you go — useful for portraits especially, where a small change in contrast reads very differently on skin than on a landscape.
A face is not a landscape — the same privacy applies either way
A portrait is a photo of one specific, identifiable person, which makes where it ends up matter more than usual. Here, it ends up nowhere: the image is processed entirely on your device, and a live proof panel shows exactly zero bytes sent while you edit. Any EXIF or location data attached to the file is removed automatically on export.
Frequently asked questions
Does the green or yellow filter get applied automatically with Soft Portrait?
No — they're two separate controls. Soft Portrait sets the tone and grain; the color filter simulation is a second, independent step you add on top, so you can pair Soft Portrait with green, yellow, or leave it neutral.
Will this work for a group photo, not just one face?
Yes. Soft Portrait and the color filters apply to the whole image the same way any preset does — they're simply tuned with a face's tonal range in mind, not restricted to photos with exactly one person in them.
Is any part of this done by an AI model?
No. Every adjustment is a deterministic filter running on your device — the same settings always produce the same result. Nothing is generated, and nothing is sent to a server to be processed.
Can I edit several portraits with the same settings?
Yes. Add multiple photos, dial in a look once, and it applies to every image in the batch when you export them together as a ZIP.