Screenshot beautifier
Put a screenshot on a backdrop with padding, rounded corners and a real shadow — sized exactly for the place you are posting it.
Drop your file here
It is processed on your device — nothing is uploaded.
What a backdrop is actually for
A raw screenshot posted on its own has no edges. Against a white feed it bleeds into the page; against a dark one it looks like a hole. Putting it on a backdrop with padding and a shadow gives it a boundary, and that is the whole of the effect — it reads as something someone chose to show you rather than something pasted in.
The size preset matters more than the colours
Every platform crops uploads to its own aspect ratio, and each one crops differently. Post a tall screenshot to X and it will show you the middle band of it; the top and bottom, which is where the interesting part usually is, get hidden behind a tap.
So the sizes here are the ones the platforms actually render at — 1600 × 900 for X, 1200 × 630 for a link preview, 1270 × 760 for a Product Hunt gallery. Pick the destination and the screenshot is fitted inside it with the backdrop filling the rest, so nothing is cropped away on upload.
The screenshot is never enlarged past its original size. Text is the one thing a screenshot cannot afford to have blurred, and upscaling is how that happens.
The shadow is where cheap tools give themselves away
A real shadow is large, very soft, offset downward, and weak — because it is cast by a diffuse light source above. The default in most tools is a small hard offset shadow, which reads as a sticker rather than as an object with depth.
The one here is sized from the screenshot rather than fixed in pixels, so it looks the same on a 600-pixel crop and a 4K capture. At a fixed size it would be an obvious black smear on the small one and invisible on the large.
Padding measured from the shorter side
A small detail that matters on real captures. Padding as a percentage of the shorter side means a wide screenshot and a tall one get visually equal margins. Take it from the longer side and a panorama ends up with an absurd amount of space above and below it.
The window frame
A macOS-style title bar, light or dark, or a plain one. It is worth adding when the screenshot is of an application and you cropped its own window edge off — the bar gives it back the sense of being a window rather than a rectangle of pixels. There is a title field, which is useful for a filename or a URL.
Leave it off for anything that is not an app window. A frame around a photograph or a chart just adds furniture.
The blurred backdrop, and why it bleeds
Using the screenshot itself, blurred, gives a backdrop whose colours already match. It is drawn larger than the canvas on purpose: a blur samples pixels beyond the edge of its source, so an image fitted exactly to the frame comes out with a pale halo all the way round. Growing it by 15% first puts the sampling inside real pixels.
Screenshots are the private files people forget about
A screenshot is usually of something you have open — a dashboard with real customer numbers, a codebase, an email thread, an admin panel, an unreleased design. It is one of the most sensitive things on a machine and one of the least thought about.
This runs in the page. Nothing is uploaded, there is no size limit, and up to twenty images can be done at once with the same settings — which is the case worth having when you are preparing a set of screenshots for one post.
Common questions
Which size should I choose?
The platform you are posting to. Each one crops uploads to its own ratio, so a screenshot at the right size arrives uncropped — which matters because the top and bottom are usually the interesting parts.
Will it make my screenshot blurry?
No. It is never enlarged past its original size, because blurred text is the one thing a screenshot cannot survive. If the preset is bigger than your capture, the backdrop takes up the difference.
Why does the shadow look different from other tools?
It is large, soft and offset downward, which is how a real shadow behaves. A small hard offset shadow is what makes an image read as a sticker.
Should I add the window frame?
Only for app screenshots where you cropped the real window edge off. Around a chart or a photo it is just furniture.
Are my screenshots uploaded?
No, everything happens in this page. Worth knowing, because a screenshot usually contains whatever you had open — a dashboard, an inbox, an admin panel.
Can I do a whole set at once?
Yes, up to twenty with the same settings, returned as a zip. That is the case that matters when you are preparing screenshots for one post.