Recreate the beautiful, dreamlike look of the very first commercial color photography process. Patented in 1903 by the Lumière brothers, Autochrome plates didn’t use modern color film layers. Instead, they relied on a microscopic mosaic of potato starch grains dyed red-orange, green, and blue-violet.
This filter doesn’t just overlay noise on your image. It generates a procedural microscopic grain map and mathematically simulates the optical transmission of light through those specific dyed grains, creating authentic pointillist optical blending.
The pointillist aesthetic
Because the color is constructed from thousands of tiny, distinct dots of primary dyes rather than smooth blended gradients, the output looks remarkably like a Seurat painting. If you zoom in closely, you will see the individual red, green, blue, and black (lampblack filler) grains. When you zoom out, the colors blend optically in your eye.
Understanding the controls
Starch Grain Size: Controls the physical scale of the procedural grain relative to your image. A smaller grain creates a sharper, more realistic photographic reproduction, while a larger grain makes the pointillist starch structure clearly visible.
Dye Saturation: True Autochromes are famous for their muted, pastel color palettes. The dense starch mosaic absorbed a lot of light, preventing vivid, highly-saturated colors from coming through. You can adjust this slider to match the exact aesthetic you want.
Age & Fading: A century of storage changes physical media. This control simulates the yellowing of the emulsion and the fading of the dark silver halides, shifting the entire image into a warmer, slightly hazy vintage look.