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Real scanlines, aperture grille and phosphor glow. Adjust every parameter and export in seconds — no plugins, nothing to install.
Resolution — Pixel size sets how coarsely the image is sampled before anything else happens; push it up and you’re simulating a lower-resolution signal. Contrast and Brightness compensate for the fact that adding scanlines darkens the whole image. Noise adds analogue signal grain.
Scanlines — Intensity is how dark the gaps between lines go. Spacing is how many pixels apart they sit, which is effectively your simulated line count. Width is how thick each dark line is. Wide, high-intensity lines at large spacing read as a 1980s television; fine, subtle lines read as a high-resolution monitor.
Mask — the single most important control for authenticity, and the one most filters skip entirely. See below.
Glow — Bloom and Radius recreate phosphor bleed, where bright areas spill light into their neighbours. Real CRTs did this because the phosphor coating kept glowing after the beam had passed. It’s what makes bright whites feel hot rather than flat.
Distortion — Curvature bends the image to match the physical bulge of the glass. Vignette darkens the corners, where the electron beam hit at a steeper angle and delivered less energy.
Colour — Aberration splits the red and blue channels apart slightly, imitating imperfect convergence. Phosphor switches the whole display to Full Colour, Green, Amber or Blue.
Texture — five scan overlays add dust, glass reflection and screen wear on top, with an intensity slider.
Shadow mask — a sheet of metal punched with a triangular grid of round holes, used by most manufacturers. Produces the dotted, honeycomb-like texture people associate with old computer monitors and consumer televisions.
Aperture grille — Sony’s Trinitron approach, using fine vertical wires instead of holes. Produces sharp continuous vertical stripes and a noticeably brighter image, which is why it dominated professional monitors and high-end sets.
Set Cell size to match the era you’re after — larger cells for a 1980s consumer set, finer for a late-1990s professional display — and Intensity for how visible the structure is.
Almost every CRT filter on the market applies scanlines and stops. Scanlines alone are the horizontal artefact. The mask is the vertical one, and without it the result reads as a striped image rather than a screen.
Green (P1) was the most common — cheap, efficient, and the persistence suited text. It’s the look of early terminals, lab equipment and the entire visual language of “computer” in films from the era.
Amber (P3) arrived later, marketed as easier on the eyes over long sessions, and became standard on European business machines.
Blue was rarer and dimmer, used in specialist and medical displays.
Switching Phosphor away from Full Colour converts the whole image to one channel — the fastest way to date an image to a specific decade.
After Effects plugins cost money, need a subscription to run in, and export a video when you wanted a still. Shader code — GLSL running in RetroArch or a game engine — is genuinely the most accurate approach, but it isn’t a design tool and it won’t hand you a PNG for a poster. One-click app filters apply a fixed scanline overlay with no mask, no curvature and no control, which is why everything made with them looks the same.
This runs in the browser with every parameter exposed, live. Nothing to install, works on desktop, tablet or phone, and exports a PNG.
(If you specifically need a GLSL shader for an emulator, this isn’t that — go and find a RetroArch preset.)
Set the image to a flat colour, turn Mask and Scanlines up, glow down, and export. You have a reusable overlay. The five built-in scan textures add dust, glass reflection and wear on top, which is the detail that stops a clean digital scanline grid looking synthetic.
For ready-made versions, our texture packs include CRT, VHS and print-degradation sets.
Scanlines exist because the beam traced discrete horizontal paths with unlit gaps between them. The mask pattern exists because colour tubes needed a physical barrier to stop each gun hitting the wrong phosphor. Bloom exists because phosphor keeps glowing briefly after excitation. Curvature and vignetting exist because the glass was physically curved and the beam struck the corners at an angle.
None of it was designed. It was the visible cost of the technology — and it’s now an aesthetic precisely because it’s evidence of a physical object, in a world where images have none.
The generator is free to play with. Uploading your own image and exporting is part of a Studio Innate subscription — which also includes the Scene Editor, the 3D Editor, 250+ mockup templates and every other generator in the suite.
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Get a feel for the core features
No credit card required
Mockup & Texture Generator plan
Cancel anytime / Secure payment
They are the two competing CRT designs. A shadow mask is a metal sheet punched with round holes, used by most manufacturers, which gives a dotted honeycomb texture. An aperture grille uses fine vertical wires instead, Sony's Trinitron approach, which gives sharp vertical stripes and a brighter image.
No. The CRT effect generator runs entirely in your browser on desktop, tablet or phone. Nothing to install, no subscription to a host application, and a live preview while you adjust every parameter.
Scanlines add dark gaps between the lit lines, which lowers the average brightness of the whole image. Raise Brightness and Contrast in the Resolution group to compensate. Real CRTs had the same limitation.
They convert the image to a single-colour monochrome display. Green was the most common phosphor on early terminals, amber became standard on later business machines, and blue was used on specialist and medical displays. Switching phosphor is the fastest way to date an image to a specific era.
Yes. Set the image to a flat colour, raise Mask and Scanlines, drop Glow, and export. You get a scanline and mask layer you can drop over existing artwork at any opacity.
No. This is a design tool that exports PNG images. If you need a GLSL shader to run live inside RetroArch or a game engine, you want a shader preset rather than this.
Yes. Every export on a paid plan carries a full commercial licence, with no watermarks and no per-use fees.
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Play with the sample image as much as you like. Scene Members can run the effect on their own artwork and export the finished file plus print-ready separations.
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