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FilmBox — Digitize Those Negatives
I’ve tried my fair-share of photo scanning apps over the years. Almost all of them revolve around digitizing old printed photos that you have in…
I’ve tried my fair-share of photo scanning apps over the years. Almost all of them revolve around digitizing old printed photos that you have in your family photo albums. My family though is and was into photography, which has yielded an abundance of physical negatives as well as prints. FilmBox has been the best way I’ve found thus far to digitize them, outside of pulling out my specialized photo scanner.
Here’s how it works. You take your film negatives and place them in front of a backlight source. You can open a white page on your Mac or iPad and crank the brightness up, which you can also get to from the link within the FilmBox app. Then you hold your phone up to the negative and tap “scan” to capture the image. FIlmBox then works its magic, applying filters to bring out the original colors of the shot.
There are a few little features in this app that I love, but voice control is by far my favorite. You’re able to set your iPhone up on a small tripod in front of your Mac and quickly put up new negatives with your hands while capturing the image via voice. Just say “Go” with the app open and it captures the slide. If you’re importing a lot of photos, this is by far the fastest way to go.
With the images imported, you can save them to the native iOS camera roll, create a collage, or share them with friends. Aside from the native iOS Share Sheet, you can also share within the app which attaches the photos and includes a link to the app.
FilmBox will automatically crop, invert, and enhance your photos but you have control over this too. You can tweak the photo edit, crop in further, or apply various filters. As well-designed as the app is, the only issue I have is that iCloud backup and unlimited scanning is hidden behind a paywall. I’d prefer to keep scanning free but offer additional features for a fee.
Regardless, if you have old negatives or slides collecting dust in a box somewhere, use this as an opportunity to revisit them and share them with your friends and family.
But enough about other people's apps.
