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Seven toner overlays, real degradation, live controls. Turn clean artwork into something that's been through a machine — in your browser.
Toner overlay → Preset picks the failure mode. Seven of them, each a different way a machine goes wrong. Covered below.
Toner overlay → Opacity is how heavily that overlay sits on the image. Low values suggest a machine that’s slightly tired; high values suggest one that should have been serviced a year ago.
Toner overlay → Scale resizes the overlay relative to your artwork. This matters more than it sounds: a streak pattern scaled small reads as fine noise, the same pattern scaled large reads as a single dramatic drag down the page. It’s the difference between texture and event.
Copy → Contrast is the heart of it. Photocopiers crush tone — they push midtones toward pure black or pure white because toner is binary, it’s either fused to the paper or it isn’t. Raise contrast and you get that characteristic blown-out, high-contrast copy look.
Copy → Exposure is the lighten/darken dial every machine had. Low exposure drops detail out of shadows; high exposure floods the page and fills in fine lines.
Copy → Edge blur softens edges the way optics and toner scatter do. A tiny amount stops the result looking like a clean digital threshold — this is the control that most separates a convincing copy from a filter.
Copy → Grain adds the paper and toner noise that sits underneath everything.
Drum drag — the imaging drum picking up and smearing toner as it rotates, producing vertical streaks down the length of the page. The single most recognisable copier artefact.
Vignette fade — the lamp not reaching the edges of the platen evenly, so density falls away toward the corners. What you get copying a book without pressing it flat.
Paper fold — the shadow a crease casts when you copy something that’s been folded. Reads instantly as a document that’s been carried in a pocket.
Feed lines — horizontal banding from the paper feed mechanism, evenly spaced across the page.
Clean grain — light, even toner noise. A machine in good condition.
Fibre grain — coarser noise following the paper’s fibre structure. Cheap uncoated stock.
Heavy streak — severe, uneven toner distribution. A machine at the end of its service life.
For zine and flyer work, layer them: run a Drum drag at high opacity, then a Paper fold at low, and you have something that reads as a copy of a copy rather than a single clean pass.
This is the fastest route to that degraded, physical, been-through-a-machine feel without applying it destructively to your artwork.
For ready-made versions, our texture packs include photocopy, toner and print-degradation sets.
Punk and hardcore zines from the late 1970s onward existed because photocopiers existed. A machine at work, after hours, was the only affordable route from an idea to a hundred copies. The aesthetic — blown-out contrast, visible streaks, generation loss from copying copies — wasn’t a style. It was what the equipment did, and everyone reading knew what it meant.
For that work specifically:
The other route is literally photocopying something and scanning it back in, which is the most authentic option and also the slowest.
Here it’s live. Change the preset, watch the whole thing change. Nothing to install, works on desktop, tablet or phone, exports a PNG.
Everything about the aesthetic follows from that. Contrast is crushed because toner either sticks or it doesn’t — there’s no half-fused toner, so there are no true midtones, only dot density. Streaks come from drums that don’t discharge cleanly. Vignettes come from lamps that don’t reach the edges. Grain is toner particles landing imprecisely on uneven paper.
And generation loss — the reason a copy of a copy of a copy dissolves into pure high-contrast noise — happens because every pass amplifies the errors of the last one. That compounding degradation is the whole look, and it’s the reason it still reads as authentic: it’s evidence of a physical process happening repeatedly, which is precisely what a digital file has never been through.
(Sometimes called a Xerox effect, after the company that made the machines.)
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
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Mockup & Texture Generator plan
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Each one recreates a different way a photocopier fails. Drum drag gives vertical smears from the imaging drum, vignette fade drops density at the edges, paper fold adds crease shadows, feed lines add horizontal banding, clean and fibre grain add toner noise at two coarsenesses, and heavy streak simulates a machine at the end of its life.
That is the effect working correctly. Toner either fuses to the paper or it does not, so real photocopies have no true midtones — only dot density. Lower Contrast if you want to keep more tonal information, though the result will read as less authentic.
Export your result, upload it again and run it a second time. That is generation loss, where each pass amplifies the errors of the last, and it is the effect real zines got from copying an original repeatedly.
Yes. Set the image to flat white, raise Grain and choose a fibre grain or heavy streak preset, then export. You get an overlay you can drop over other artwork at any opacity rather than applying the effect destructively.
It softens edges the way real optics and toner scatter do. A small amount stops the output looking like a clean digital threshold, and it is the setting that most separates a convincing photocopy from an obvious filter.
Yes, though it works best on graphic, high-contrast artwork. Photographs come out noisier, which is exactly what a real photocopier did to them.
Yes — the two names describe the same look. Xerox is a trademark of Xerox Corporation, whose machines popularised the process, so the effect is often named after them. The underlying technique is xerography, and this generator recreates it.
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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