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Film Lab 35

Photo & Video

Free

Film Lab 35

by Arjun Gupte

4.7 (10) v1.2.1 8 MB 4+

Screenshots

Description

Film Lab 35 is a darkroom in your pocket. This is not a filter app, this is a physically-informed simulation of real film photochemistry, built from analyzing over 1,500 real film scans.

Select a film stock. Watch your photo develop. Save your frame to your own local Lightbox.

15 ICONIC FILM STOCKS

Color Negative
- Kodak Portra 400 - The gold standard for portraits
- Kodak Gold 200 - Warm, nostalgic, everyday magic
- Kodak Ektar 100 - Vivid saturation, fine grain
- Fujifilm 400 - Clean, cool, natural
- Fujifilm disposable 400 - That summer camera look

Slide Film
- Fujichrome Velvia 50 - Landscape legend, electric greens and blues
- Kodak Ektachrome E100 - Clean slide color, cool neutrals

Cinema
- CineStill 800T - Signature red halation, tungsten balance
- Kodak Vision3 250D - Hollywood's daylight stock, shot as stills

Black and White
- Kodak Tri-X 400 - Iconic punchy contrast
- Ilford HP5 Plus - Soft, nuanced, open shadows
- Ilford Delta 3200 - Huge grain, glowing highlights, the night stock

Instant
- Polaroid 600 - Warm, faded, dreamy
- Fujifilm Instax Mini - Clean instant snapshots

Experimental
- LomoChrome Metropolis - Desaturated, moody, cinematic

REAL PHOTOCHEMISTRY

Every stock is built on a 13-stage rendering pipeline that simulates actual film behavior:

1. Linearization of your input
2. Log exposure mapping
3. Film density curve (Hurter-Driffield)
4. Emulsion layer cross-talk
5. Decode back to linear light
6. Two-layer grain synthesis
7. Per-channel characteristic curves
8. Color chemistry simulation
9. Scanner simulation
10. Print stage (paper contrast and crossover)
11. Halation glow
12. Output encoding
13. Optical finish (bloom, vignette, softness)

Learn more about the process in the in app Science tab.

THE DEVELOPING RITUAL

Watch your photo develop through every stage. No instant filters. A tactile, intentional experience that honors the craft.

DATA-DRIVEN AUTHENTICITY

Each stock profile was developed by analyzing over 1,500 real film photographs where we measured shadow color, highlight behavior, saturation, contrast, grain texture, and color temperature across multiple exposure conditions. Every parameter is informed by real measurements, not aesthetic guesses.

ALL LOCAL, ALL PRIVATE

Your photos never leave your device. No cloud processing, no data collection, no tracking. Everything runs on-device. No cloud, ever.

GENTLE POST-PROCESSING

Once your photo is developed, optional fine-tuning lets you adjust brightness, contrast, warmth, saturation, and grain from clean to a pushed-negative 400 percent. The Darkroom section adds real lab controls: push and pull development, printer lights, highlight compression, and a film format dial. These adjustments sit on top of the "photochemical" render and they don't break the emulation.

YOUR LIGHTBOX

Every developed frame is saved to your personal local Lightbox: a collage of your film work, arranged like prints on a table.

WHAT YOU GET FREE

Start with three iconic stocks:
- Kodak Gold 200 (warm everyday)
- Kodak Tri-X 400 (classic B&W)
- Fujifilm Disposable 400 (summer vibes)

Unlock individual stocks for $0.99 each, or get all 15 plus future additions with the Full Lab bundle.

Film stock names referenced in this app are trademarks of their respective owners. Film Lab 35 is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or licensed by any of these companies. Our emulations are original artistic interpretations.

What's new (v1.2.1)

SHARE THE DEVELOP
- Export frames: a clean darkroom print border, or a full 35mm negative strip with sprockets and edge print
- Quartz date stamp, straight off a 90s point and shoot
- Before and after export: the photo you started with next to the film it became
- Light leaks: orange blooms burned in before development, so the film chemistry shapes them. Reroll until you like the accident

IN THE LAB
- Velvia 50 holds its highlights harder, the way slide film really clips
- Tri-X and HP5 shadow tones re-matched to the datasheets
- Portra grain slightly finer, Gold slightly coarser, matching their published grain indexes