From the shutter to the final image, pressing the shutter is only one step. In the darkroom era, photographers spent hours on enlarging and grading. Today film is mostly seen on a screen, so this step, digitizing the negative, is just as worth the care. When I scan my own film I keep noticing how much of a frame's final look is decided at the conversion stage. Some frames I'd discard came back looking good once I converted them a different way.
The group where I'm doing my PhD is an imaging research group that goes back to the film era. Over this time I've built up some new understanding of how the mathematical models of an image relate to human perception. I wrote ColorHead in my spare time, and worked through the classic color-science text The Reproduction of Colour by R.W.G. Hunt, which goes into real detail on how film forms an image and the principles behind color reproduction. As someone who shoots film, I wanted a tool whose workings I actually understand, because the conversion is part of taking the picture.
Once the first prototype worked, I shared it with a small group to try, and the images they sent back were genuinely encouraging. Then research got too busy and the project stalled, until kayamerel joined and we picked it back up. Now we've polished it a lot, and it's finally ready to share.
Do one thing, the inversion, and do it right. It borrows the mindset of darkroom enlarging and gives you grading tools that feel native to film. Here's what it cares about:
It works whether you scan with a camera or a dedicated scanner, and it stays focused on the inversion instead of trying to be a one-stop swiss knife.
一张胶片从按下快门到最终呈现，快门只是其中一步。暗房年代，摄影师会在放大和调色上花掉大量时间。今天胶片主要是在屏幕上被看到，这一步数字化同样值得花心思。我自己扫片的时候就发现，一张片子最后的样子，很大一部分是在“转换”这一步定下来的。有些被我标成废片的图，换个方式重新转换，又让我挺满意。
我读博的实验室，是一个胶片时代就建立起来的成像技术实验室。这段时间，我对图像的数学模型和人眼感知之间的关系有了一些新的理解。我在空余时间写了 ColorHead，也啃了经典色彩科学教材，R.W.G. Hunt 的《The Reproduction of Colour》，它把胶片怎么成像、色彩还原的原理讲得很细。从我自己拍胶片的角度，我需要一个我清楚知道它怎么工作的工具，因为转换这一步本身也是拍照的一部分。
第一个原型做出来后，我在一个小群里分享试用，群友的返图和认可让我挺受鼓励。后来科研太忙，项目一度搁置，直到新成员加入，我们才又把它捡回来。到现在，我们打磨了很多，终于到了可以拿出来分享的时候。
专注把“反转”这一件事做对。用暗房放大的思路，提供一些「原生」于胶片的调色工具。具体来说，它在乎这些：
DIY 相机翻拍或者扫描仪扫描都能用，它只做“反转”这一步，没打算做成一站式的全能软件。