A free photo editor for Higher Photography

Grain & Tone is a free photo editor made for pupils studying SQA Higher Photography. It does the editing and printing jobs the course asks for, in a web browser, on the computers and devices pupils already have. There's nothing to download, no account to make, and nothing to pay.

Why pupils use it

• Free, with no catch. No subscription, no trial, no watermark and no adverts.
• Works on school computers. Windows PCs, Macs and Chromebooks in Chrome, Edge or Safari, so there's nothing for IT to install.
• Works at home too. On an iPad or iPhone it can be added to the Home Screen and used like an app.
• Your photos stay private. Editing happens on your own device. Photos are never uploaded, and there's no login.
• Like Lightroom, without the cost. The sliders and panels work the way Lightroom and Photoshop's Camera Raw do, so skills carry over.

What you can do with it

• Open camera RAW and iPhone photos: RAW files from Canon, Nikon, Sony, Fujifilm and most other cameras, iPhone HEIC and ProRAW, as well as JPEG.
• Edit light and colour: exposure, contrast, highlights and shadows, white and black points, curves, white balance, vibrance, saturation, a colour mixer and colour grading.
• Black and white: a colour mix like coloured filters, and film types such as Tri-X, HP5 and Delta 3200.
• Film looks: film stocks, grain, clarity, dehaze, vignette and glow (diffusion, bloom and halation).
• Edit part of a photo: brush, gradient and radial masks, colour and brightness ranges, and AI masks that select the subject, people, the sky or the background.
• Clean up: heal and clone dust, spots, hairs and blemishes, with a dust finder for scanned film and prints.
• Crop and straighten: level the horizon, fix leaning buildings, and add a white border in millimetres.
• Print well: check your screen's brightness against paper, soft proof for your paper, make darkroom-style exposure test strips, and export A4 or A3 prints at 300 dpi, sharpened for matte or glossy paper.
• Present your work: several photos on one sheet, and contact sheets, for your portfolio or folio.
• Organise a project: star ratings, picks and rejects, collections, and copying one photo's edit to a whole set.

Getting started

1. Open grainandtone.co.uk in Chrome, Edge or Safari.
2. Import your photos: JPEG, iPhone HEIC, PNG, WebP, AVIF or camera RAW (Canon, Nikon, Sony, Fujifilm, DNG and more). RAW works best on a computer.
3. Edit, then export. A4 and A3 prints come out the right size to print at 100%.

The help pages explain every tool, with tips for printing coursework.

For teachers

Grain & Tone runs from one web address with no accounts, so a class can start in minutes, and nothing about pupils is collected or stored online. If the school's web filter blocks it, ask IT to allow grainandtone.co.uk. Everything the app needs comes from that one address.

Grain & Tone is an independent project. It isn't made or endorsed by SQA.

Start editing   Read the help