Frequently asked questions

An iPhone or iPad, your film, and an even, bright light behind it. A small LED light pad (the kind sold for tracing) works best, but a second phone or tablet showing a plain white screen, or a bright overcast window, will do in a pinch.

Keep the film flat and dust-free — a film holder, or a sheet of anti-newton glass, helps a lot — and turn off the room lights so nothing reflects off the film.

Color negative film (C-41, with its orange mask), black and white negatives, and positive slide film. Choose Negative or Positive with the Open As switch on the home screen, then pick Color, B&W or Original as the Image Type in the editor.

Any film size you can photograph works: 35mm, 120 medium format, large format sheets and more.

Yes. Instead of Take Photo, tap Photo Library or Choose File on the home screen to open any photo of a negative — including ones taken with another camera or a dedicated film scanner. FilmReverseIt never changes the original; it saves a new file.

On iPhones that have an ultra-wide lens with macro focusing, turn on the Macro button in the FilmReverseIt camera. It keeps the macro lens on, so the camera can’t switch back to the main lens and lose focus — handy at the edge of a film strip. The setting is remembered, because a whole roll is usually scanned the same way.

If your device has no macro lens, move back a little and crop afterwards; you’ll lose some resolution but keep a sharp image. Tap the film on screen to focus on it.

The camera screen has a built-in level. Lay the film flat on the light, hold the phone above it, and adjust until the level shows you’re square. Keeping the phone parallel avoids a keystoned (trapezoid-shaped) frame and keeps the whole picture in focus. A copy stand or a phone tripod pointing straight down makes this effortless for a whole roll.

Turn on the B&W button in the FilmReverseIt camera before you take the photo, and the scan opens as a black and white negative. You can also change the Image Type to B&W in the editor at any time. Like the Macro button, the B&W setting is remembered for your next scan.

Open the Color section, tap Pick White Balance, then tap something in the picture that should be neutral gray or white — a cloud, a white wall, a gray road. FilmReverseIt balances the whole picture around that spot. Fine-tune with Color Temperature and Saturation, and use the Tone sliders (Exposure, Brightness, Contrast and Black Level) for the rest.

To undo a single slider, double-tap its label. Reset All Adjustments starts over but keeps the image type, rotation and crop.

In the Dust Removal section tap Remove Dust Spots, zoom in, and tap each speck. Spot Size sets how big an area each tap repairs, and Smartness trades speed for quality (Quick, Normal or Thorough). Undo removes the last spot. Cleaning the film with a blower brush before you scan saves a lot of tapping.

Yes. Once a frame looks right, choose Save Preset… and give it a name, then use Apply Preset on the next frames. A preset stores the color, tone, sharpness, noise and grain settings. Crop, rotation and dust spots are left out, because they are different for every frame.

JPEG, HEIC, PNG and TIFF can be saved to your Photos library or to a folder in Files. JPEG 2000 and BMP can be saved to Files only. JPEG, HEIC and JPEG 2000 have a Quality setting; PNG, TIFF and BMP are lossless. When you save to a folder, a file with the same name is never overwritten.

It saves a second file next to the positive, with “_Negative” added to its name: the same cropped, cleaned-up picture with its tones inverted back to a negative. It’s useful as an archive copy, or if you want to process the negative again in another app later.

Yes. Tap Image Info to set the film type, roll ID, the camera and lens the film was shot with, the exposure (shutter speed, aperture, ISO and focal length), the date the picture was taken, and the artist, copyright and description. These are written into the saved file’s metadata, so your photo apps show the original film camera rather than the iPhone you scanned with. Save Changes as Defaults keeps the values you set for the following scans.

The film type, roll ID, frame number and date can also build the file name — choose which parts and their order under File Name Format on the Save Positive screen. The film type, roll ID and date are remembered after each save; tap Start New Roll when you move on to the next roll.

No. Everything happens on your iPhone or iPad. FilmReverseIt has no account, no cloud processing and no tracking — your scans go only where you save them. See the privacy policy for details.

Any iPhone or iPad that runs iOS 27 or iPadOS 27 or later. Any device with a camera can photograph film; iPhones with a macro-capable ultra-wide lens can get closest to small formats like 35mm. FilmReverseIt also works without a camera, on photos you open from your library or Files.

No. Scanning, editing and saving all work offline.