Burnt paper edges — a charred paper PNG, drawn in your browser
You get burnt paper edges without a photo: this page draws the sheet, burns the rim into it and hands you the file with a transparent background, so it drops straight onto your own design. Set the size, the paper tone, how deep the char bites and how ragged the rim is — then download.
A drawing, not a lesson and not a shop: nothing here shows you how to burn paper with a lighter, and nothing here sells paper.
Runs in your browser — nothing is uploaded, and nothing needs to be.Preview
checkerboard = transparentThe burnt sheet
What this page does, exactly
There is nothing to upload. You set the size, the paper tone, how deep the char goes, how ragged the rim is and which edges are burnt; the page draws the sheet, walks a burned outline around it, and then burns the rim into the sheet pixel by pixel — for every pixel it measures the distance to the outside and paints the char from that distance. The area outside the outline is never painted, so those pixels are transparent in the file you download. The preview sits on a checkerboard for exactly that reason — the checkerboard is standing in for the empty pixels.
The phrasings people use for this file all land here: burnt paper edges, burn paper edges, burnt edges of paper, burnt paper PNG and burnt paper edge PNG are one object — a sheet of paper with a charred, eaten rim on an empty background. If you came here wanting a burnt paper effect to drop onto a design, that is the file this page produces.
The rim is burnt, not cut
A tear and a burn do not leave the same edge, so this page does not reuse a tear with a darker colour. Four layers of noise are added along the perimeter, and they are doing two different jobs:
- One coarse layer (a feature about every 1/6 of the shorter side) pulls deep bites into the sheet — the places where the flame got a hold and the edge is eaten well in.
- Three finer layers (1/22, 1/80 and 1/260 of the shorter side) fray the line itself, so the rim is charred and broken rather than a clean contour.
The amplitudes at 100% raggedness are 3.0%, 1.7%, 0.8% and 0.35% of the shorter side. Those seven numbers are constants in this page's script, and they are written as fractions of the shorter side rather than as pixel counts on purpose: a 400 px sheet and a 4,096 px sheet then come out as the same shape, only bigger, and the preview is a true scale model of the file you download.
The char is a gradient, measured from the rim
The charred band is not a brush stroke. For each pixel inside the outline the page computes the distance to the outside, then reads the colour off a fixed ramp — the same ramp whatever the size, so the burn looks the same on a thumbnail and on a poster:
| Distance from the rim | Colour | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| 0% | rgb(11, 9, 7) | the carbon right at the edge |
| 16% | rgb(29, 20, 16) | charcoal |
| 34% | rgb(64, 36, 23) | scorched brown |
| 54% | rgb(122, 74, 34) | burnt umber |
| 74% | rgb(176, 124, 63) | toasted tan |
| 100% | the paper tone you chose | unburnt paper |
The band is 5.5% of the shorter side at 100% depth, and two more things are laid on top of it: the band's own width is modulated by ±45% of noise, so the inner boundary of the char is uneven rather than a smooth offset line; and near the rim, scattered pixels are darkened into ash specks while the outermost eaten pixels are left transparent, which is what makes the very edge ragged rather than painted on.
Because all of it comes from a seed rather than a fixed stamp, no two presses of Re-burn give the same sheet — and because the seed is printed on this page and can be typed back in, you can also get the same sheet again.
The controls, one by one
| Control | What it does | Where it shows |
|---|---|---|
| Size | The size of the sheet, from 400 to 4,096 px on either side. The three presets are shortcuts; the sliders set it exactly. | The downloaded file's pixel size. |
| Paper | The tone the unburnt paper is filled with: white, cream, kraft or black. | The colour of the paper under the char. |
| How deep the char goes | Scales the charred band from 0% (no char at all — the plain sheet) to 200% (a band twice as wide as the default). | How far the blackening reaches into the sheet. |
| How ragged the rim is | Scales all four noise layers from 0% (a clean, straight burn line) to 200% (deep bites and a badly frayed rim). | How eaten and uneven the edge is. |
| Which edges are burnt | All four, top and bottom only, or left and right only. The other edges come out clean and straight. | Which sides of the sheet are charred. |
| Seed | The number the burn is drawn from. Re-burn picks a new one; typing a number and pressing Use this seed draws that exact sheet again. | The sheet's outline and its char. |
Limits, stated up front
- One sheet at a time. There is no batch mode on this page.
- No account, and your sheet is not saved. Close the tab and the drawing is gone; the sheet is never stored, and there is no history to return to.
- The char is computed per pixel, so the ceiling is lower than on the tear page. This page will not build a sheet over 8,000,000 pixels or over 4,096 px on a side, and the message states the number when it refuses. The boundary was measured during the build on this machine's Chrome: the largest sheet this page allows renders and encodes, and one step past it is refused.
- The preview is capped; the download is not. Above 1,400 px the preview is drawn scaled down so the controls stay responsive, and the file itself is drawn at the full size you asked for — same seed, same settings, same shape.
- Output is PNG or WEBP. Both hold transparency, which is the whole point of this file. JPEG is not offered here because it cannot carry an empty background — a JPEG of this sheet would come out with a solid rectangle behind the paper.
- This is a generated char, not a photograph of burnt paper. Nothing here is sampled from a picture or a texture file; the edge is noise and the char is a ramp. If you need the real thing, burn some paper and scan it — this page is for when you need the look on a sheet at a size you choose, with an empty background.
Numbers on this page, and where each one comes from
| Number | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Outline noise wavelengths | shorter side ÷ 6 / 22 / 80 / 260 | Constants in this page's script (LAM_FRAC). |
| Outline amplitudes at 100% | 3.0% / 1.7% / 0.8% / 0.35% of the shorter side | Constants in this page's script (AMP_FRAC). |
| Char band at 100% depth | 5.5% of the shorter side | Constant in this page's script (BAND_FRAC). |
| Char ramp | the six stops in the table above | Constant in this page's script (RAMP); the last stop is the paper tone. |
| Band-width modulation | ±45% | Constant in this page's script. |
| Pixel ceiling | 8,000,000 px | Enforced by this page before drawing; the boundary was measured on this machine's Chrome during the build. |
| Side ceiling | 4,096 px | Same — it is the slider's own maximum, so it cannot be exceeded by dragging. |
| Output formats | Measured at load | The page probes your browser's encoder when it loads and prints the result under the controls. |
Do I need a photo of burnt paper to use this?
No, and that is the point of this page. Nothing is uploaded at all: the sheet, the eaten rim and the char are all drawn from scratch in this tab. If you want a photo of your own underneath a burned edge, that is a different job — the torn paper effect page takes a picture and works on its edge.
Is this really burnt, or a torn edge with the words changed?
It is generated, and the mechanism is different from a tear. A tear here is a noisy outline filled with the paper tone. This page adds a charred band measured pixel by pixel from the rim, read off a fixed colour ramp from near-black carbon through scorched brown into the paper tone, with ash specks near the edge and eaten pixels at the outermost boundary. Nothing is sampled from a photograph — it is a drawing of a burn, and it says so.
Is the background really transparent?
Yes, in both PNG and WEBP. Everything outside the burned outline is left unpainted, so those pixels carry no colour in the downloaded file. The checkerboard behind the preview is standing in for them. There is no JPEG button here because JPEG cannot hold an empty background.
Will the same settings give me the same sheet?
Only if you also keep the seed. The seed is printed on the preview and can be typed back in, so the same seed with the same size, paper, char depth, raggedness and edges reproduces the same sheet. Press Re-burn and a new seed is drawn, which is how you browse for a rim you like.
How big a sheet can I get?
Up to 4,096 px on either side, and no more than 8,000,000 pixels in total — both numbers are enforced before anything is drawn and both are printed on this page. The sliders stop at the side ceiling, so you cannot ask for more by dragging. Above 1,400 px only the preview is scaled down; the download is always drawn at the size you set.
Can I burn only one edge?
You can burn all four edges, the top and bottom only, or the left and right only. The edges you leave alone come out clean and straight, which is what you want when the sheet is meant to continue off the side of a layout.
What can I do with the file?
It is a sheet of paper with a burned edge and an empty background, so it sits on top of other things: a heading in a document, a thumbnail, a mock-up, a journal or scrapbook page, a poster you are ageing, a treasure-map prop. Because the paper tone is flat and the background is empty, it takes on the shape of whatever is behind it.
Does the download have a watermark?
No. The download is the canvas exactly as drawn, unmarked, and there is no limit on how many times you press the button.
Is any of this sent anywhere?
The sheet is drawn and encoded in this tab with the browser's own canvas. There is no upload endpoint on this page, and no file leaves your device — there is no file to leave it.