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LCD Screen Effect

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Settings are written to the URL as you change them. Nothing differs from the defaults yet.

Make a screenshot, a game frame or a photo look like it is being shown on a flat panel and photographed up close. The picture is resampled onto a grid of cells, each cell becomes three sub-pixel stripes, and the panel gets the flaws a real one has: backlight bleeding in from the corners, a wash when viewed off axis, and a few stuck pixels.

Cells and stripes

Pixel pitch sets the cell size as a share of the shorter side, so the preview and the download carry the same grid. Each cell is the average colour of the source pixels it covers, split into three vertical stripes in the usual red, green, blue order. Cells can instead be left whole, a plain pixel grid with no stripes.

Sub-pixel mask sets how far the stripes replace the flat colour. At 0 the cell is a block of its average colour; at 100 each stripe lights only its own channel, so a white area becomes red, green and blue lines, and a red area lights the red stripe alone. The black matrix, the dark border between stripes and between rows of cells, widens with the mask, since on a panel the two are one structure.

Backlight bleed

Edge-lit panels leak light at the corners, the bottom pair most of all because that is where the light bar sits. Backlight bleed adds a soft cool glow there, strongest in dark areas, which is where the eye catches it on a real screen.

Off-axis wash

Seen from the side, an LCD lifts its blacks and loses contrast, and the far edge of the panel washes more than the near one. Off-axis wash applies that gradient across the picture. It is the setting that sells a photo of a laptop taken from a chair beside the desk; for a straight-on shot leave it at 0.

Stuck pixels

Stuck pixels sets how many cells are locked to one colour, black or white. One or two are enough to read as a real panel; a dozen is a damaged one.

LCD or CRT

The CRT effect curves the glass, adds scanlines, a dot or slot mask and phosphor glow. This one is flat, with rectangular cells and stripes and no scanlines. Pick by the device: tube televisions and arcade monitors are CRTs, phones, laptops and flat monitors are LCDs.

Frequently Asked Questions

It resamples the picture onto a grid of cells, draws each cell as three vertical stripes lit red, green and blue with a dark gap between them, and adds the things a real panel shows up close: backlight bleed from the corners, a wash when viewed off axis, and stuck or dead pixels.

A CRT has curved glass, a shadow mask of dots or slots, scanlines and phosphor glow. An LCD is flat, with a regular grid of rectangular cells and stripe sub-pixels, no scanlines and no curvature. Use this one for a phone, laptop or monitor look and the CRT effect for a tube.

The size of one cell as a share of the shorter side of the image. 0.8 percent on a 1500 pixel photo gives 12 pixel cells; lower values are a finer panel seen from further away, higher values a close-up where the stripes dominate.

How much the stripes and the dark grid between them show. At 0 each cell is a flat block of colour, like a pixelate filter. At 100 only the stripe's own channel is lit and the black matrix is at its widest, which reads as a macro photo of a screen. The cells are brightened so the average brightness stays close to the source.

Off-axis wash imitates viewing the panel from the side: blacks lift and colours lose contrast, more on the far edge. Set it to 0 for a panel seen straight on.

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