Film to PhotosAbout Film to Photos
Who makes Film to Photos, what it's for, how we test it with real film scanners, and what it doesn't do yet.
In one sentence: Film to Photos is a Mac app (macOS 11 or later, Apple Silicon and Intel) that scans 35 mm color negatives with a Plustek OpticFilm film scanner and turns them into finished, natural-looking photos automatically, with no Plustek driver, SilverFast or VueScan needed. Tested with the OpticFilm 7400; the OpticFilm 7200, 7200i, 7300, 7500i, 7600i, 8100 and 8200i should work (beta); the 8300i and 135i aren't supported for direct scanning yet.
Why we made it
Film to Photos was started by a beginner, not a photo expert. They bought a Plustek film scanner to turn a box of family negatives into photos and found the usual software confusing: pages of settings, unfamiliar terms, and photos that still came out orange or off-color unless you knew how to fix them.
Many families are in the same spot. They have shoeboxes of old negatives and a film scanner, but the bundled software is hard to use or no longer works on a new Mac. Film to Photos is built for exactly that moment: plug in the scanner, press Scan, and every negative comes out as a finished, natural-looking photo, named and saved in a folder. The advanced tools are still there for people who want them, but you never need them to get good photos.
Film to Photos is an independent Mac app. It is not affiliated with Plustek or any scanner maker.
How we test
We'd rather be honest than impressive, so here is exactly what's been tested:
- Scanner: the Plustek OpticFilm 7400, on an Apple Silicon Mac running macOS 27. That is the only model we have tested on real hardware so far.
- Other OpticFilm models (7200, 7200i, 7300, 7500i, 7600i, 8100, 8200i) use the same open-source scanner support from the SANE project and should work; they're marked beta until we or customers confirm them. The 8300i and 135i aren't supported for direct scanning yet. See the scanner list.
- Film: built and tested for 35 mm color negatives. Black-and-white negatives are new and still being tested on more film. Slides aren't supported yet.
- Conversion: checked on real family negatives of everyday scenes — lamp-lit rooms, people in front of windows, daylight — for neutral walls, natural skin and good brightness, with the original scans verified unchanged after every conversion.
If something doesn't work with your scanner, Settings → Save a scan report creates a text file you can email to us. Nothing is ever sent automatically.
What it does not do (yet)
- The scanner's own infrared dust cleaning (ICE / iSRD). Dust cleanup works from the picture itself instead (one click for small specks), plus a manual dust brush for hairs and scratches.
- Camera RAW import. It imports TIFF, JPEG, PNG, scanner DNG and iPhone HEIC files.
- Windows, or scanning with other scanner brands (you can import their files).
Privacy
Everything happens on your Mac. There's no account, no cloud and no tracking. See the privacy policy.
Our guides
The guides are written by the people who make the app, from hands-on scanning. Where we compare other products, we stick to facts from their own websites and say when something may have changed. If you spot a mistake, tell us at [email protected].
Open-source
The Scanner Helper inside Film to Photos is built from the open-source SANE project under the GPL; see open-source for the source code.