Open Negative Initiative

Convert, edit and catalogue your scanned film. Negatives, slides and black & white, from a camera or a scanner. A free film negative converter for Mac and Windows.

Download for MacGalleryDownload for Windows

The raw scan of the arcade: the pink neon reads pale green, the silhouette almost white, under the orange base.

Straight out of the app.

The photograph above was converted in Open Negative Initiative. This is the editor.

The Open Negative Initiative editor on the Color tab: a converted night photo of glass lift lit green on a Paris pavement at night on the canvas, the frames of the roll on the left, and on the right the histogram, AUTO WHITE BALANCE and the colour and exposure sliders.

What it does to your film

Scans from a camera or a scanner, your originals untouched, nothing to pay. Then what it does to your film, step by step.

Converts what you scan. Camera RAW, linear DNG, TIFF, JPEG or PNG, from a camera on a copy stand, a film scanner or a flatbed, as Negative, Positive or B&W.

Non-destructive. Your originals are never rewritten: each edit lives in a small JSON file beside its scan, and the export writes a new 16-bit TIFF or JPEG.

Free and standalone. No Lightroom, no account, no paid tier.

One measurement per roll. Measured from all its frames.

Prepare the Roll reads every frame and balances the roll on their median.

The editor's Roll tab on its Measured Roll block, which reads: Acts on the 9 photos measured with this roll.

Colour management. What you edit is what you export.

One working space, a paper's ICC profile included, proofed on the canvas.

Archive and Projects. Your folders are the catalogue.

A roll is a folder, a project gathers frames across rolls, and nothing is copied.

The gallery open on the Film Scans folder, each roll's frames laid in a grid under its folder's name.

Dust and scratches. You paint, your photo patches.

Dust on a negative prints as white specks. Paint over one, and it is filled from your own frame.

A crop of a colour frame before the brush: two pale dust fibres on a blue wall. — Before

The same crop after two brush strokes: the fibres are gone and the grain of the blue is unchanged. — After two brush strokes

Density inversion. Every stop gets the same room.

Your negative is turned back to light in density, the way film recorded it, so your highlights keep their detail.

The Roll tab's Density Ceiling slider, above the Per-Channel Levels block.

Chroma denoise. Colour noise goes, grain stays.

The colour noise of a dark or thin frame goes; your film's grain stays as it was.

A crop of a night frame before chroma denoise: coloured speckle across a dark coat. — Slider off

The same crop after chroma denoise: the coloured speckle is gone and the film grain is unchanged. — Slider on

Contact sheets. Your roll on one sheet.

Five frames to a row, each numbered by its place on the roll.

Export and EXIF. Your camera, lens and film.

Ready for the web, a screen or a print, with your camera and film written in the EXIF.

The EXIF column of the Export screen: Name, then Camera, Lens, Film, ISO, Date, Artist and Copyright.

All features

Every roll, labelled with its film.

41 stocks, by maker. Picking a colour stock also sets its dye family under Dye Separation.

Generic Azure
Generic Black & White
Generic Color Negative
Generic Color Positive
Generic Redscale

AgfaPhoto APX

CineStill 400D
CineStill 50D
CineStill 800T

Foma Fomapan 200
Foma Fomapan 400
Foma Fomapan 401

Harman Phoenix
Harman Phoenix II
Harman Red

Lomography LomoChrome Turquoise

Lucky Color 200

Mira Color 400
Mira Color 800

Dye Separation, in the manual

Press Y, M or C.

Colour, set with keys modelled on lab scanner keypads. Switch the toolbar from Pro to Scanner, and each press is a step toward yellow or blue, magenta or green, cyan or red.

Press − or +, or type Y, M or C.

Double-click to bring it back to rest; Shift with − or + moves three steps.

Silent here. In the app each key clicks, and Mute Key Clicks turns that off.

Scanner, in the manual

Open source.

GPL-3.0. The code is written in a public repository, and every release ships with its own source.

1.5.4Latest version2 November 2026OpenNegative-1.5.4-source.zip
1.5.32 November 2026OpenNegative-1.5.3-source.zip
1.5.22 November 2026OpenNegative-1.5.2-source.zip
1.5.11 November 2026OpenNegative-1.5.1-source.zip

One app instead of Lightroom and a plugin.

A negative converter with its own catalogue. It replaces a Lightroom and Negative Lab Pro workflow.

App	Open Negative Initiative	Negative Lab Pro	Capture One
Needs another app	No	Lightroom Classic	No
Price	Free	$99 once, plus Adobe	Subscription or perpetual

Negative Lab Pro is a Lightroom Classic plugin: $99 once, plus Adobe. Open Negative Initiative needs nothing underneath it and keeps the catalogue itself. Leaving the plugin? What a crack still costs, and what switching keeps.

Negative Lab Pro price and Lightroom requirement from negativelabpro.com/pricing, consulted 15 August 2026. Capture One negative conversion shipped in 16.7.4, March 2026, from its release notes, consulted 15 August 2026.

Negative Lab Pro alternatives, compared

Questions before you convert

Before you download. Cost, Lightroom, scanners, film types, the orange mask, your original files, Windows and Linux.

Is it really free?

Yes. Open Negative Initiative is free in full: no paid version waits further along, and nothing asks you to sign in. It is licensed GPL-3.0.

Do I need Lightroom or Photoshop?

No. Open Negative Initiative is a standalone application, not a plugin, and it keeps the catalogue itself, so nothing goes back to Lightroom. Nothing else has to be installed, and there is no subscription underneath it.

Does it work with a flatbed or a film scanner, or only with camera scans?

Both. Open Negative Initiative opens the TIFF or linear DNG that a flatbed or film scanner writes, and the RAW of a camera on a copy stand. It also reads RGB Passes: a frame shot three times, under red, green and blue light, read as one negative. Prepare the Roll asks which one digitised the roll.

Does it do black and white and slide film?

Yes. Open Negative Initiative reads a slide as a Positive roll and black and white as a B&W roll: pick it in the first step of Prepare the Roll, and change it later under Film Type in the Roll tab. Prepare the Roll balances a roll of slides on a white or grey you click on one slide, a cloud or a wall, and leaves each slide's blacks and whites alone; skip the click and your slides keep the camera's 5500 K.

How does it remove the orange of a colour negative?

Show it the bare film once. In Prepare the Roll, click the border or the gap between two frames: that orange becomes the black of every frame of the roll, so the cast goes with it, the same on every frame.

Does it modify my original files?

No. Open Negative Initiative reads your scans where they are, in the folder you add, and your settings travel with that folder, so deleting the app's index loses nothing. A file moves only when you move photos into a new roll, and Undo puts it back. Deleting a photo hides it in the ONI Trash, its file untouched.

Is there a Windows or Linux version?

Windows, yes: Open Negative Initiative runs on Windows 10 and 11 in 64-bit, the same application as on the Mac. It is made for those two systems, macOS and Windows.