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f8 Develop is a new film negative inversion app made specifically for macOS and is meant to support photographers who scan with a mirrorless or DSLR camera at home.
Designed by indie Mac developer and film photographer Chris Stoll, f8 Develop offers what he claims is the first film digitization app that utilizes Apple’s Adaptive Gain Map.
“I built this app because I wasn’t super happy with the existing options for various reasons,” Stoll says. “f8 Develop is Mac-native and uses Apple’s own image stack end to end. The headline feature is HDR HEIC output via Apple’s Adaptive Gain Map. I haven’t found another film scanning app that supports this. It can make a difference for scenes with bright skies or backlit subjects, if a person is into those sorts of things.”
The claim here is that on an XDR display — either one of Apple’s standalone displays or the ones found in its laptops — highlights look significantly better. Additionally, in Apple Photos, scans “look exactly as they should.”
Stoll says that f8 Develop measures the film base of the roll using the visible rebate in the scan and corrects for it — the same principle that made the Pakon scanner legendary. The app can also write camera, lens, film stock, and copyright data directly into the metadata of the files. When photographers then export to Apple Photos, all that information is immediately visible in the info panel without having to manually tag or use third-party plugins.
f8 Develop also allows photographers to organize rolls by session with film stock, date, and location. It also allows photographers to develop the entire roll at once with the option to re-develop any time, non-destructively. Photos can be exported as HEIC, TIFF, or JPEG, depending on preference.
Stoll also puts significant emphasis on his goal of not adding another subscription service to a photographer’s seemingly ever-growing stack. Instead of a monthly or annual fee, f8 Develop — which is a standalone app that doesn’t need any host app (like Lightroom) to function fully — is built around a one-time purchase model.
f8 Develop is available for $49.99 on the Mac App Store.
Image credits: f8 Develop
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English (US) ·