Download Open Negative Initiative

Why your system asks at all

Because the app is software from someone you have not met, and your system is doing its job. Clicking past it is a real decision, so here is what you can check without taking anyone's word for it.

One file, from one place

The download comes from the project's own release page, where every version ever published is still listed, each with its note.

The source of what you run

The complete source of each version is attached to it, if you read Rust: where it is, and what the licence gives you.

Signed updates, originals kept

The app keeps an update only if it carries the project's own signature, so what reaches you is what the project published. Your original scans stay as they were: each photo's settings live in a small file beside it.

What it sends over the network

On its own, two things: it looks for a newer version twice a day, through this site on a Mac and on the project's GitHub Pages on Windows, and on the first launch of each version it says which version it is and which one it replaced, so installs can be counted. Those version numbers and the country the request came from are all the project keeps.

Two more happen when you ask: FEEDBACKS sends your message and the app's version as a public issue, with an encrypted console log unless you switch it off, and Get Paper Profiles… fetches a paper maker's profiles from that maker's own page.

On a Mac, System Settings is the way

Recent macOS lets an app through from System Settings, as above, whatever a tutorial written a few years ago says about right-clicking it and choosing Open. It is asked once, and the app opens normally from then on.

What goes in

Your scans as camera RAW, DNG (including the linear DNGs scanner software writes), TIFF, JPEG or PNG, from a camera on a copy stand or from a film or flatbed scanner. Everything the app does to them is one page per feature. Coming from Lightroom and a plugin? Negative Lab Pro alternatives, compared.

Open the folder that holds them: Open Folder… in the File menu (⌘O, or Ctrl+O on Windows), or ADD FOLDER… in the gallery's bar. Your files stay where they are, as they are, and each photo's settings live in a small file beside it, which travels with the folder.

In what colour space

A camera RAW is decoded at one fixed white, the same for every camera. A file that names its colour profile is read in it; one that names none, like a scanner's raw TIFF, is read as sRGB, Linear or Display P3, as you pick under Read as in the Roll tab.

Save the negative as a negative

The conversion starts from what the film holds. Let your scanner software save the scan as it is, a negative, in RAW, DNG or a 16-bit TIFF, with its own inversion and colour corrections off: your photo then keeps every tone the film recorded for the conversion to work with.

One roll, one folder

Prepare the Roll reads the frames of a roll together, and what it finds acts on every photo measured with that roll. Scan each roll into a folder of its own. If a folder holds two, Move into a New Roll… moves the photos you select into a new roll folder, after asking, and ⌘Z puts them back; Move to ONI Trash sets a photo aside and leaves its file in place.

Shoot the empty light panel

Scanning with a camera? Take one frame of the light panel with nothing on it, at the settings of the roll. A light is rarely even to its edges, and uneven light darkens or tints the corners of every frame: in Prepare the Roll, click that shot, then USE THIS FRAME AS FLAT-FIELD. A scanner skips this step.

Leave some bare film in the scan

The unexposed border of the strip, or the gap between two frames, is the bare film base: on a colour negative, its orange. Prepare the Roll asks you to click it, and that click sets every channel's black for the whole roll, so scan at least one frame with a sliver of border around it.

If something goes wrong

Press FEEDBACKS in the app's bar, or Report a Bug / Give Feedback… in the Help menu: your message and the app's version become a public issue, with no account needed. A question about your own setup, like whether your scanner's files will open, goes there too.

For a colour or decoding problem, the RAW file is what reproduces it: read what has already been reported, then open an issue with the file attached, which needs a free GitHub account.

A frame of a roll that was never measured opens Prepare the Roll first. If a photo still opens flat, milky or nearly white once its roll is measured, it is a bug worth reporting, even though nothing crashed.

Formats and colour spaces

A 16-bit TIFF or a JPEG, in the space your photo is edited in, declared in the file: sRGB, Display P3 (where the app starts), Adobe RGB, ProPhoto (16-bit TIFF only) or a paper's profile. A TIFF is compressed with ZIP, lossless, on at first.

What the colour space keeps

The space declared in the file tells the next app, the lab or the printer how to read its numbers, so your colours arrive as you saw them. sRGB suits the web and a file whose destination you have not chosen yet; Display P3 and Adobe RGB hold more saturated colour for the screens and print workflows built on them; a paper's profile prepares the file for that paper.

Why your scan's EXIF names the wrong camera

The EXIF of a scan describes the digitising: the camera or scanner that photographed your negative, its lens, its ISO, the day of the scan. Beside each preview, the photo's own line, Name, Camera, Lens, Film, ISO, Date, Artist and Copyright, opens on those facts so you can write the film camera, its lens, the stock, its box speed and the day you took the picture. That line is what the file carries.

Brighter on HDR screens

A JPEG can carry a flat gain map, Brighter on HDR screens: an HDR screen shows your picture up to two stops above the page's white, no pixel changes, and every other reader sees the same picture.