01
Developed live
Aim at a negative and the finished photograph develops on screen as you watch: colours true, the orange mask lifted, nothing to scan and no waiting around.
Your digital darkroom, in real time
Point your camera at a negative and watch the finished photo appear: colours true, the orange mask gone, developed live. The darkroom feeling, on your Mac.
Coming to the Mac App Store Read the docs →
macOS · tethered capture · processes locally
For the love of film
See your film come to life, the moment you shoot it
No scanning and waiting. No bouncing into another app to invert and fix it afterwards. Just your film, the way it was meant to look.
02
Negative in, positive out
See the negative going in and the finished positive coming out, side by side, with dual histograms so every frame is well exposed.
03
Sharp every frame
Focus peaking, a composition grid and clipping warnings keep every shot crisp. A satisfying shutter saves your photo the instant you press it.
04
Dial in the look
Nudge exposure, contrast and white balance and watch the positive shift in real time. The look is yours, dialed in while you shoot.
05
Shoot the whole roll
Move down the roll frame by frame without breaking rhythm. Each one develops, saves and you're on to the next in seconds.
Works with your gear
Your camera, your film, your Mac
No special hardware. Tether what you already shoot with and start developing.
Cameras
Hundreds supported
Any camera libgphoto2 drives over USB. If yours shoots tethered, it most likely just works.
Film
C-41 · E-6 · B&W
Colour negative, slide and black & white, detected from the negative automatically.
Output
RAW · TIFF · JPEG
Save the format you want, full EXIF metadata written the instant you capture.
Privacy
100% local
Everything runs on your Mac. No cloud, no account, nothing ever leaves your machine.
Why FilmBench
From negative to photograph, without the detour
The old way
- Scan every frame
- Import to the computer
- Invert and pull the orange mask
- Correct the colour by hand
- Repeat, frame after frame
With FilmBench
- Point the camera at the negative
- Watch it develop, live
- Press the shutter
- Saved, on to the next
A note from the maker
Hi, I'm Bogdan. I built FilmBench because I shoot film and grew tired of the scan-invert-tweak-repeat shuffle. I wanted to see the photograph while the negative was still in front of me: that little bit of darkroom magic, watching the image appear.
FilmBench is that feeling, made digital. I hope it brings some of the joy of film back to your desk. Now go shoot something beautiful.
Bogdan