CRT Retro Screen Effect - Old TV Look for Photos and Screenshots

Turn a photo into an old-TV picture with scan lines and colour separation.

Give Your Photos the Old CRT Television Look

Before flat screens, every television was a big glass tube, and every picture carried the marks of that technology. You could see faint horizontal scan lines across the image, colours that bled slightly at the edges, and a soft darkening towards the corners where the curved glass caught less light. Anyone who grew up with those screens recognises the look instantly. This tool recreates it. Upload a photo and it adds scan lines, colour separation, and a vignette, turning a modern digital image into something that looks like it came off a 1980s television.

The tool is free and runs fully in your browser. Your photo is never uploaded anywhere, so screenshots, personal photos, and client work all stay private. The result downloads as a PNG.

What Makes the CRT Look

The most recognisable part is the scan lines. A CRT drew its picture one horizontal line at a time, and the gaps between those lines were visible as fine dark stripes. This tool darkens every third row of pixels, which reads as scan lines at normal viewing sizes. The intensity slider controls how dark those lines are. A gentle setting gives a subtle texture, while a strong setting gives the unmistakable striped look of a close-up television photograph.

The second part is colour separation. On a CRT, the red, green, and blue parts of the picture were drawn by separate electron beams, and they never lined up perfectly. This tool shifts the red channel a few pixels one way and the blue channel a few pixels the other way, which creates the coloured fringes you see around bright edges in old TV photos. Set the shift to zero for a clean picture with scan lines only, or raise it to three or four pixels for a stronger retro feel.

The Vignette Completes the Illusion

The third part is the vignette: a gradual darkening towards the corners. Old screens were curved, and the corners always looked a little dimmer than the centre. The tool adds a soft radial darkening that mimics that falloff. It is subtle on its own, but combined with the scan lines and colour shift, it sells the illusion. Without it, the picture looks like a filter. With it, the picture looks like a screen.

Together, these three effects are stronger than any one of them alone. That is worth remembering if the first result looks too mild or too harsh. Adjust one control at a time. Usually the scanline intensity is the one to tune first, then the colour shift, and the vignette takes care of itself.

Photos That Work Best

Bright, bold photos suit the CRT look best. Video game screenshots, neon signs, colourful portraits, and 1980s-style scenes all gain from it, because the effect was born in that era and the subject matter matches. Dark, moody photos can work too, but heavy scan lines on an already dark image can swallow detail, so keep the intensity lower there.

Text-heavy images need care. Scan lines cut across letters, and colour separation blurs their edges, so small text can become hard to read. If the photo contains a sign or a caption you want people to read, use a low shift and a moderate scanline setting, and check the result at full size before downloading.

Ideas for Using the Effect

The CRT look is popular for social media posts, especially for retro gaming content, synthwave artwork, and throwback photos. It suits posters, album covers, and party invitations with an 1980s theme. Streamers use it for channel art and thumbnails, because it reads instantly as retro even at small sizes. Teachers and presenters use it to show students what old television actually looked like, which is a surprisingly effective history lesson in one image.

It also works as a storytelling device. A photo processed this way looks like a memory rather than a record, which suits family throwbacks, anniversary posts, and anything where you want the viewer to feel nostalgia rather than just see a picture.

Keeping the Effect Believable

Restraint is the secret. Real CRT screens were not as extreme as the most dramatic filters suggest. The scan lines were fine, the colour fringing was slight, and the vignette was gentle. If your result looks like a parody of a television rather than a television, pull each slider back a notch. The most convincing retro photos are the ones where a viewer feels the era before they can name the effect.

There is no account and no install. Upload a photo, set the scanlines and colour shift, download the result, and your photo never leaves your browser.

CRT Retro Screen Effect – Old TV Look for Photos and Screenshots