Photograph a negative on a light — an iPad showing white is enough — and bring the picture in from Photos or Files. Filmlume reads colour negative, black-and-white and slide the way a lab scanner does, in density with the orange mask divided out, and gives the picture back at the full resolution it came in. And any photo already on your phone can be printed on one of 37 film looks. It works with 35mm and 120mm film, in colour, black and white and slide. When it looks right, share the finished photo from the editor to Messages, WhatsApp, mail or any other app through the share sheet. Graduated and radial filters, blacks and whites, and six CCD looks give a photograph the finish of a raw editor. Optimised for iPhone Duo.
A shoebox of negatives, and no scanner.
An iPad showing white, a photo of each frame — and the pictures come back, one by one.
Drag across the picture. On the left, a 35 mm frame exactly as it came off a film scanner — the orange mask, every colour inverted. On the right, the same frame in Filmlume.
The author’s own film. Look: Portrait 400 · colour +15.
NegativePhotographOne editor, every pose. Closed, the picture sits above the tools and the actions stay in the system’s side bar. Open, the filmstrip, the picture and the tools sit side by side. On half of the large screen every control is still there, just narrower.
The app’s own screens, at the sizes of the iPhone Duo displays.
Bring in a photo of a negative and the positive is on screen at once — balanced on its own greys, the orange mask gone. Hold to see the negative again, star the good ones, and use one frame’s edit on the whole roll.
Pick the look of the film you shot — 37 of our own, from soft portrait colour and vivid daylight to gritty black-and-white and bright slide film — and print the photos already on your phone on them too. Every picture stays editable.
Exposure, contrast, highlights, shadows, warmth, tint, saturation and a colour head’s filtration, with a live histogram, pinch to zoom, a straighten and a crop — every figure moves the moment the slider does, a double tap puts any of them back to zero, and a swipe takes you straight to the next frame. Take the film base from the rebate, or tap something grey to balance the colour exactly.
Graduated and radial filters, as in a raw editor: lay one over a sky or a face, with its own exposure, contrast, highlights, shadows, whites, blacks, warmth, tint and saturation, a soft edge, and the effect inside the shape or outside it. Up to six on a frame; drag the handles on the picture.
Set the deepest and the brightest tones on their own with Blacks and Whites. Photographs can also be printed in six CCD looks — the deep blues and hard reds of early digital cameras — and no film look adds grain unless you do. Large files come in as files and go out at their full size.
Touch the line to add a point, drag it to bend the curve, double-tap to take it away: one curve for the whole picture and one each for red, green and blue. The picture follows your finger live.
Small specks and dust on a scan disappear; long thin things — wires, railings, aerials, branches — stay where they are. Switch on the preview to see exactly what is removed, and lower Size or Sensitivity if it takes too much.
From a strip of film to a picture on your phone.
Lay the negative on a light table — or on an iPad showing the app’s own light table.
Square over the film, with any camera or your phone’s own Camera app. RAW, DNG or TIFF keeps the most.
Start a roll — the film and the format — and pick the pictures in Photos or Files.
Film look, light, colour and crop — non-destructive, always undoable.
Every pixel of the original to Photos as 10-bit HEIF, a JPEG to send, or a 16-bit TIFF to wherever you edit. Only a crop makes it smaller.
Photographing a negative is easy. Getting its colour right is the part that takes a lab — or this.
| The question | The usual answer | Filmlume |
|---|---|---|
| The orange mask | Inverted, and the picture turns blue | Divided out, using the film's own base |
| Colour balance | A fight with sliders | Each dye layer balanced — or on a grey you pick |
| Seeing what you get | Invert it later, on a computer | The positive on screen the moment a frame is brought in |
| Film character | One generic look | 37 film looks of our own — soft, vivid, gritty or slide — as starting points |
| What you keep | A smaller copy | Every pixel of the original — 100 MP in, 100 MP out — and 16-bit TIFF |
Start a roll of Photos and print any picture from your library on a film look. The originals are never touched.
Red, green, blue and brightness over the picture, with a light when shadows or highlights are lost.
Star the frames worth keeping, show only those, and save them all to Photos in one go.
Frames stay grouped by roll, with the film they were shot on — and one frame’s edit can go to the whole roll.
Your pictures stay on your device until you save or share them.
Try everything for three days — nothing is charged and nothing renews. Then one payment, and it is yours for good.
No account and nothing to sign up for. Try the whole app for three days; then it asks once, and you decide.
Download on the App StorePrices are shown on the App Store, in your own currency. Three days free, then one payment — nothing renews.
A light and something to keep the phone steady. An iPad or a second iPhone showing the light table is an even, flicker-free light big enough for 6×9. A stand, a copy stand or a pile of books keeps the phone square over the film.
They are made from the full resolution of the picture you bring in — a RAW or DNG file from a camera, a ProRAW file from an iPhone, a 16-bit TIFF from a scanner — and leave the app at that same resolution: a 100-megapixel file comes out at 100 megapixels. The conversion works in density, the way lab scanners do, so colour negatives come out without the muddy cast of a simple inversion. A dedicated film scanner still resolves more grain; for sharing, for prints of modest size and for keeping, the results are excellent.
No. They are looks of our own, each modelled on the kind of print a family of film is known for — contrast, saturation and colour lean — and applied as a starting point. They carry our own names; no film maker is connected with this app.
Yes. Slides are read as positives and only get their black and white points; black-and-white negatives are converted in grey.
Every app can be tried in full for three days before you pay anything. The offer is shown on the App Store page and again in the app, nothing is charged by surprise, and when the days are up you decide, once.
The App Store page shows what it costs and how it is paid — once, or as a subscription — in your own currency, before anything is charged. Apple takes the payment, so this developer never sees a card or a name. There are no advertisements.
Yes. Cancel at any time in the App Store: tap your picture at the top right, then Subscriptions. That is the only place a subscription can be stopped — the app cannot do it for you, because Apple takes the money. You keep it until the end of the period you have already paid for.
Refunds are handled by Apple, not by us — we never see your payment details and cannot issue one. Go to reportaproblem.apple.com, sign in, and choose the purchase.
Whatever you bought belongs to your Apple Account. Sign in on an iPad or a new iPhone with the same Apple Account, open the app, and choose Restore on the purchase screen. Nothing is charged again.
One purchase covers one Apple Account. It is not shared with a family and cannot be passed round a firm — a second person needs their own.
No. There is no account, no sign-in and no server. Everything the app holds is on your own device and is removed when you delete the app.
The only network traffic the app causes belongs to the App Store, when you buy, subscribe or restore.
Whatever your device is set to, if that language is one it has been translated into; otherwise English. There is no language setting to get wrong — changing your iPhone's language changes the app with it.
Payments, refunds and cancellations
Apple takes every payment for this app. That means Apple — and only Apple — can look a charge up, stop a subscription or give a refund. This developer never sees a card, a name or a payment, and has no way to change one.
Cancelling is done at the App Store, and nowhere else. Open the App Store, tap your picture at the top right, then Subscriptions. Cancelling stops the next payment; what you have already paid for runs to the end of its period. Do it at least 24 hours before the period ends, or that renewal goes through anyway.
What this app does not do
It does not remove dust and scratches by itself, and it is not a drum scanner. Colour is an interpretation, as it is in every scan; the film looks are starting points, not certified emulations, and every picture can be adjusted.
A purchase belongs to your Apple Account, not to one device. On a new phone, or after reinstalling, open the app and choose Restore on the purchase screen. Nothing is charged again.
Open the App Store, tap your picture at the top right, then Subscriptions. That is the only place a subscription can be stopped — this app cannot do it for you, because Apple takes the money. Cancelling stops the next payment and leaves the period you have already paid for running to its end. A one-time purchase never renews and has nothing to cancel.
Still stuck? Write to alpenlume@gmail.com — say which app, which iPhone or iPad, and what you expected to happen.
Last updated 10 September 2026.
The short version
Filmlume collects nothing and sends nothing. Your pictures stay on your device.
Nothing. This app has no account, no sign-in, no analytics, no advertising identifier, no crash reporting service and no tracking of any kind. No profile is built and nothing is shared with anyone.
This app has no server of its own: nothing to sign in to, and nothing uploaded to the developer, ever. What it does with the internet — for most of these apps, nothing at all — is set out under “On your device” above.
Two things do use the internet, and both are somebody else's. The App Store does, when you buy, subscribe or restore. And when you share something — a dish, a recipe, a document — iOS hands it to the app you picked, whether that is Messages, Mail or WhatsApp, and that app sends it over its own connection under its own privacy policy. Nothing is sent unless you press send, and this app never learns where it went.
Buying is handled entirely by Apple. The app never sees a card number, a name or an address; it asks the App Store one question — whether this Apple Account owns the app — and receives yes or no. Apple's own privacy policy governs the transaction.
This app is not directed at children and collects nothing from anybody, so there is nothing held about a child to disclose, correct or delete.
Data protection law gives you the right to see, correct, export and erase personal data held about you. Because none is held, there is nothing to produce or delete on request. Everything the app has is on your own device: deleting the app removes it, and it was never anywhere else.
If this policy ever changes it will be dated above. It will not be changed retroactively, because there is no collected data for a change to newly permit.
