A unique image aesthetic makes a big difference in representing any personal or professional brand online. Career and hobby photographers, marketing executives, and casual social media patrons alike are in constant pursuit of easily distinguishable visual content, and this basic need to stand out from a crowd has, in turn, driven the democratization of photo editing and filtering services in the last decade or so. Nearly every social media platform you can think of (not to mention many e-commerce websites and various other casual sites where images are frequently uploaded) now incorporates some means for programmatically altering vanilla image files. These built-in services can vary greatly in complexity, ranging from simple brightness controls to gaussian blurs.
With this newfound ease of access to photo filtering, classic image filtering techniques have experienced a widespread resurgence in popularity. For example, the timeless look associated with black and white images can now be hastily applied to any image upload on the fly. Through simple manipulations of brightness and contrast, the illusion of embossment can be harnessed, allowing us to effortlessly emulate a vaunted, centuries-old printing technique. Even posterization – a classic, bold aesthetic once humbly associated with the natural color limitations of early printing machines – can be instantly generated within any grid of pixels.