FilmBox by Photomyne

Depending on what you’re trying to do, determines the Photomyne app you need. In my case, I had negatives that I needed to produce pictures of, since this is getting difficult, (and probably MAD EXPENSIVE), to get done. PLUS, if your negatives are all you have, you’re really not trying to leave or especially SEND them off to some unknown entity to produce prints for. So I “initially” paid for Photomyne, not realizing the deceptive advertising says it could deal with negatives. “My experience” with Photomyne is that it DOESN’T do that. You instead need the FilmBox app for that! Photomyne, the app, is for scanning photos! It simply took pictures of my negatives. Now FilmBox on the other hand, actually does a PRETTY AMAZING job creating photos from negatives! I’d suggest you also obtain a physical device that holds your negatives and possibly even your phone to do the work. Though they offer a “backlight” website to give you a white background to project your negatives to, it’s TOUGH holding the negative in one hand, while holding your phone in the other, keeping both steady, to get a good image. But if/when you do, and use the embedded tools to improve your images! Man! Great Applications! Fairly reasonably priced if you have a LOT of negatives (or photos) to reproduce. My suggestion though if you’re in my situation, search for and download the FilmBox app! Grab a slide/negative viewer that produces its own backlight, then use the embedded tools to perform initial (or final) fix up of your captured and reproduced image. Definitely worth it!

I wasted all my free scans trying to get a full frame of several photos. This app only uses an auto crop feature which never works for negatives at the end of the strip, or if someone is standing next to a vertical object such as a lamppost or a wall. it can’t find the right or left and so cuts out half the photo. If there was the ability to turn that stupid thing off this would be a winner. The color conversion is decent and I figure I’ll fix them up later as best I can. But I’m screaming at this thing for an hour because it can’t crop many of the photos properly. What’s infuriating is that 35mm negatives are always the same size so it should be a no brainer but it’s making this decision to cut out part of the frame with no way to control for it. Added: the developers responded to this review to say you have to see the side holes. I did that diligently! and about 75% of the time it worked as expected. However there are only holes on the top and bottom (or left/right depending which way you place the negative). What this app cant see are the 2 sides that don’t have holes, most frequently apparent on the first and last image of the strip, if the image is dark, if there is a black person or someone with a dark face in a shadow, or, if there is no face at all, it crops to the brightest spot, with no ability to capture the whole frame. For example, I have photos of Eddie Murphy in a dark club where it only will scan his white sweater, always cutting off his face. Out of 24 photos I could only scan 3, and one of them cut off his forehead. I have photos of my grandfather where all I could get was his elbow, which had more light on it, and one of a table of food that persistently cropped out the entire table except one bowl of pretzels. The color correction is very good but the auto crop needs to have an option to turn off in cases like this. If that was a feature this app would be really great.

I tried 4 negative scanning apps and this was by far the best! It easily crops and recognizes photos. Easy to export. Quick turn over between scans. A few tips. Follow their directions. Hold the negative at least 2 inches away from the white screen otherwise it will look pixelated. Hold the phone as close to the negative as you can. Use the voice control feature. Practice. Try a few different angles and a few different distances until you get the best look. Once I had my chosen method I was able to scan 5 rolls of film in an hour or less. (I had a tiny bit of trouble finding a good solid white background but eventually I opened a blank note and turned my brightness all the way up.) I hooked clothes pins over my laptop screen with a flexible wire to hold the negative still and away from the screen. Then I was able to easily steady my iPhone near the negative to get a good shot. Another option would be to steady your phone with a tripod or kick-stand. My scans were not as good as the originals were, but these were pictures that were lost to me. It was wonderful to see them again.