For black & white film scans

Your negatives,as they should be.

Dust & Scratch Remover finds dust, lint and scratches on your black & white negative scans, rebuilds them with the film's own grain, and develops the cleaned negative into a finished print. Whole rolls at a time, in 16 bits, without ever touching your originals.

Buy once · €59 Try 15 images free

One-time purchase
Windows & macOS
Activates offline

Print of a modern building from a real negative scan, covered in dust specks, lint and long scratches — Real scan, extra dust added for the demoDrag the curtain

The same print after cleaning with Dust & Scratch Remover: clean sky, grain intact — Real scan, extra dust added for the demoDrag the curtain

Why it exists

Infrared dust removal can't see through silver.

Digital ICE and iSRD find dust with an infrared channel. Traditional black & white film is made of silver, which blocks infrared too, so on your Tri-X, HP5 or Fomapan the scanner's dust removal simply doesn't work.

Dust & Scratch Remover finds defects from the image alone. It measures the grain of each frame, then looks for marks that stand out from it: sharp, isolated specks sitting on the film surface, lint, and the long thin scratches that run along the roll. Real detail like stars, catchlights and fine text is left alone, and you always have the last word.

50film profiles, from Kodak and Ilford to Foma, Rollei and Lomography

40film-look development presets to start from

16-bitin and out, processed in 32-bit float throughout

0changes to your original scans. Every result is a new file

One roll, start to finish

From a dusty scan to a finished print, in one app.

The work follows the order you already use in the darkroom: clean the negative first, where dust has the most contrast, then develop it. Each frame below is a step of that workflow.

▸ 1Import

Bring in a whole roll and let it work.

Choose your DNG or TIFF scans, pick the film and the polarity, and the roll is processed in parallel in the background. Frames appear in the film strip as soon as they're ready.

Projects and rolls. Each project holds its rolls; switch between them without restarting.
Keep originals where they are, or move them into the roll, verified by size and checksum before the source is removed.
Resumable. Interrupt a batch and it picks up where it stopped.

Negative scan with dark dust specks, lint and scratches in the sky

The same negative with each detected defect outlined in colour by type

▸ 2Detect

Finds dust by the way dust behaves, not by guessing.

Dust sits on the film surface, so it's sharp, isolated and darker than everything around it on the negative. Image detail is softer and connected to its surroundings. The detector measures the grain in every part of the frame and only flags what stands out from it.

Dust speckLintScratchFine dust

Specks in textured areas, such as façades and window frames, caught by a second detector that grain and stripes don't fool.
Transport scratches found only along the length of the film, so cables, masts and horizons are left alone.
Fine dust clouds, the drying residue and limescale specks barely bigger than the grain, flagged only where there are far more dark specks than grain alone would make. The grain around them is left untouched.

100% crop of sky and roofline with dust, lint and scratches — 100% cropgrain copied, not painted

The same crop rebuilt, with continuous grain — 100% cropgrain copied, not painted

▸ 3Rebuild

Repairs that keep the grain.

Ordinary retouching leaves smooth, plastic patches that give themselves away in a print. Here the tone is rebuilt from the surroundings and the grain is copied pixel for pixel from clean film right next to the defect, so the repair disappears into the frame. The copied grain is scaled to the density where it lands, so a bright sky gets bright-sky grain.

Healing brush for anything you paint by hand: it searches the frame for a matching patch and blends its edges invisibly. You can see, and move, where each patch came from.
AI for larger defects. An inpainting model fills thick marks, then puts the real grain back on top. Press I to see it before you export, with a progress bar while it works. Choose LaMa for the best quality or MI-GAN, about four times faster.

▸ 4Review

You decide. Every mark, every frame.

The software errs on the side of caution and leaves the final call to you. Check each frame with the curtain or a single key, and correct what it got wrong in a couple of clicks.

Click a mark to keep or reject it. Shift-drag to reject a whole area, like a starry sky.
Live sensitivity. Move a slider and the marks update in about half a second. Or tune it to the measured grain of the whole roll and save it as your own profile.
Approve with A and move to the next frame. Undo and redo cover every edit, per image.

Cleaned negative of fishing boats moored in a marina

The developed print of the fishing boats in the marina

▸ 5Develop

A digital enlarger, not an invert button.

A negative is a record of densities, not a picture to flip. The cleaned scan is converted to density and printed on virtual photographic paper, with the controls you'd have at the enlarger. Highlights roll off like a real paper instead of clipping.

Print exposure, paper grade 0–5, paper black and gloss. All at zero gives a faithful straight print.
Measure per frame or per roll, so a whole roll prints with consistent tones, like a contact sheet.
Crop and straighten with classic film ratios (3:2, 6×6, 6×7, 4×5…) and a horizon tool.

▸ 6Finish

Shape the tones. Keep the grain.

Highlights and shadows are recovered with edge-aware filters, so there are no halos around buildings or faces. Texture and sharpening work on the image detail, not on the grain, and noise reduction removes scanner noise while leaving the film grain intact.

Exposure, contrast, highlights, shadows, clarity, texture, sharpening, vignette.
Tone curve of up to 16 points that can never invert tones, with an eyedropper to find any tone on the curve.
Toning in sepia, selenium, cyanotype or split tone, and 40 film-look presets as a starting point.

▸ 7Dodge & burn

Dodge and burn, the way you did under the enlarger.

Brighten a face, darken a sky, add contrast to the foreground. Each zone has its own exposure, contrast and clarity, and every zone travels with the recipe to export.

Brush, linear and radial gradients, with feathering and opacity.
Select the sky or the main subject with AI in one click, then refine with the brush.
Compare variants side by side, or match the look of another frame from the roll.

▸ 8Roll & export

Treat the roll as a roll.

Rate and pick frames in the working strip, apply a recipe to the whole roll or to a selection, and print a contact sheet that looks like the real thing. Export what you need, named the way you want.

Stars, picks and rejects with filters, right on the film strip.
Grayscale 16-bit TIFF with an embedded profile, JPEG for sharing, or the clean RAW in its original format: a DNG stays a DNG, metadata identical.
Roll data (camera, lens, film, developer, author, copyright) written to every exported file.

▸ 9Grid

See the whole roll at once.

Press G and the frames fill the screen as a grid, like prints laid out on a light table. Spot the keepers, compare exposures across the roll and jump to any frame with a single click.

From contact-sheet small to large with a slider, + and − or Ctrl-scroll. The size is remembered.
Picks, stars and approvals on every thumbnail, with the same filter as the working strip: only the picks, or no rejects.
Click to open a frame in the viewer, ready to work. Esc or G brings the grid back.

▸ 10Clone stamp

Paint from anywhere in the frame.

When there is nothing to heal but something to remove, a sign, a mark, a stray boat on the horizon, the clone stamp copies one part of the frame onto another, exactly as it is, grain and all. It works like the one you already know.

Alt-click to pick the source (Option-click on a Mac), then paint. A cross follows the brush and shows where it is copying from.
Aligned: the offset stays the same from stroke to stroke until you pick a new source.
Soft edge you control, from a hard rim to a gentle fade, with Shift and the mouse wheel. Each stroke keeps its own, can be undone one by one, and exports exactly as you see it.

The toolbar

Every tool, explained where you point.

This is the toolbar from the app. Point at a button (or tap it) to see what it does and its shortcut.

Also in the box

The details that make a long scanning session easier.

Before, after, curtain

Switch views with Space and C. Before and After labels fade away when you point at them.

White paper view

See the print on a paper-white background with a border, like a proof.

Clipping warnings

Pure blacks and whites highlighted in colour while you adjust.

GPU acceleration

Optional, and only after a compatibility test on your own computer.

Contact sheets

A4 or A3 at 300 dpi, PDF or JPEG, with your roll data printed underneath.

Command line

Process, export and develop whole folders from a script.

English, Portuguese, Spanish

The interface follows your system language, or the one you choose.

Keyboard first

Arrows to move, A to approve, B and E for the brushes, S for the clone stamp, M for the overlay.

Sample project

Four dusty Tri-X frames open on first launch, so you see the result in seconds. They don't count towards the trial.

Hide any defect type

Click a colour in the legend to hide specks, lint, scratches or brush marks. Only the view changes.

Next frame, already open

While you work, the next frame is read and cleaned in the background. Each file is read from disk only once.

Full screen

Tab shows the frame alone on black, fading in and out. The arrows move through the roll.

Film profiles

Knows the grain of the film you shot.

Fine tabular grain and coarse classic grain need different sensitivity. Each profile sets a starting point from the film's grain class, and the app still measures the real grain in your own scans, developer and scanner included. Unknown or old film? Use a generic profile and tune it to the roll.

Kodak

Tri-X 400
T-Max 100
T-Max 400
T-Max P3200
Plus-X 125

Ilford

HP5 Plus
FP4 Plus
Delta 100
Delta 400
Delta 3200
Pan F Plus 50
SFX 200
XP2 Super
Ortho Plus 80
Delta 400 CE

Kentmere

Pan 100
Pan 200
Pan 400

Fujifilm

Acros II 100
Neopan Acros 100
Neopan 400
Neopan 1600

Rollei

RPX 25
RPX 100
RPX 400
Retro 80S
Retro 400S
Superpan 200
Infrared 400
Ortho 25 Plus

Foma

Fomapan 100
Fomapan 200
Fomapan 400
Retropan 320
Fomapan R100reversal

Adox HR-50
Adox CHS 100 II
Adox Scala 50reversal
Bergger Pancro 400
CineStill BwXX
Ferrania P30
Ferrania P33
Ferrania Orto 50
JCH StreetPan 400
Leica Monopan 50
Lomography Berlin Kino 400
Lomography Potsdam Kino 100

Generic

Fine grainISO 25–100
MediumISO 200–400
CoarseISO 800+, push

Safe

Your originals are never modified.

Every clean file, print and export is written somewhere else. Edits are saved as recipes you can change at any time.

Precise

16 bits in, 16 bits out.

Processing runs in 32-bit float from your 16-bit scans. ICC profile, resolution and scanner metadata are carried over.

Yours

No account, no subscription.

Your licence key is checked on your computer, without an internet connection. It keeps working whatever happens to this website.

Pricing

Pay once. Keep it.

One licence, every feature. Try it first on 15 of your own scans with nothing locked: the only limit in the trial is the number of images you can import.

Your licence key arrives by email right after purchase and is tied to that address. Activate it in the app with the key icon in the toolbar.

Lifetime licence

€59one-time

Every feature, cleaning and development
Unlimited images and rolls
Windows and macOS (Apple Silicon)
All 1.x updates included
Offline activation, no account

Buy now · €59 Download free trial

Questions

Before you buy.

Which files does it work with?

16-bit TIFF and DNG scans of black & white film, saved as negatives or already inverted to positives. Linear scans (raw or "48-bit linear" modes in your scanning software) give the best development, but scans with a gamma curve work too.

Which scanners are supported?

Any scanner whose software saves 16-bit TIFF or DNG. The app was tuned on raw DNG scans from VueScan with a film scanner at 2500 dpi; the size limits for dust adapt automatically to your resolution.

Will it change my original scans?

No. Originals are only ever read. Clean files, prints and exports are new files, and nothing is overwritten in your export folders: a name that already exists gets _2, _3 and so on.

Does it work with colour film or Ilford XP2?

It's made for black & white. XP2 Super has its own profile and cleans well. Colour negatives and slides aren't supported, and for those your scanner's infrared dust removal is the right tool.

What does the free trial include?

Everything. You can import 15 images on your computer, and each image counts once, so re-importing or reprocessing it doesn't use up the trial. Enter your key later and the limit disappears.

How does the licence work?

After paying you receive a key by email, tied to the address you bought with. The app checks it on your computer with no internet connection and no account, and checks it again at each start. Updates within version 1 are included.

System requirements

Windows64-bit. Installs per user, no administrator rights needed. Optional GPU acceleration with DirectX 12 or NVIDIA.

macOSApple Silicon. Signed and notarized by Apple. Optional acceleration through Core ML.

Large scans need memory: each parallel job uses about 0.5 GB for a 50 MB DNG.

Start with your dustiest roll.

Fifteen frames free, then €59 once.

Buy · €59 Free trial

Free trial

Download and clean 15 frames free.

Every feature, no account, no card. When you buy, the same app unlocks with the key we email you.

macOSApple silicon (M1 and later) · signed and notarized · .dmg WindowsWindows 10 and 11, 64-bit · .zip with the installer