Relief-Print Mark Extraction

A relief print is built from discrete printed layers — a key block of linework, a handful of flat color blocks, and a ground tone beneath it all. This tool separates them back out with classical color separation: deterministic, no model, no GPU, in milliseconds. Each layer drops straight into Photoshop or Procreate as a brush or texture.

Everything runs in your browser. Your image is never uploaded — no server, no network, no storage.

Source print

Drop an image here
or use your own print

Choose file PNG or JPG · processed locally, never uploaded

Pick a sample or drop an image to begin.

Separation controls

Key block threshold 18th percentile

The darkest N% of pixels by luminance become the key block (linework).

Color layers (k) 5 clusters

k-means in RGB. The lightest cluster is treated as the ground tone.

Extracted layers

Choose a source print above and the separated layers will appear here, each on a checkerboard so you can see its transparency. Every layer downloads as a transparent PNG.

How the separation works

No machine-learning model is involved. The same input always produces the same layers — it is ordinary arithmetic over pixels, run on a downscaled copy (longest edge ≤ 1100px) for speed.

Luminance

Each pixel's brightness is measured as L = 0.299R + 0.587G + 0.114B.

Key block

Pixels darker than your chosen luminance percentile become the linework, rendered as near-black ink on transparency.

Color clusters

k-means groups the remaining colors in RGB space. Centroids are seeded across the luminance range, then refined over the image.

Ground tone

Clusters are sorted dark to light. The lightest becomes the ground tone; each other cluster is a color layer, tagged with its swatch.