Ancient Light
iOS Universel / Photo et vidéo
Ancient Light transforms your iPhone into a camera of the nineteenth century.
Twelve authentic historic photographic processes - each faithfully simulated through the physics of tone, silver chemistry, grain, paper, and light. Not filters. Processes.
-- THE TWELVE PROCESSES --
Daguerreotype (1839) - The first successful photograph. A mirror-like silver surface with luminous shadow detail and a quality that painters of the era envied.
Tintype (1853) - The photograph of the working class. Robust, immediate, metallic, with regular or square format options and optional worn plate borders.
Albumen (1850s) - Warm egg-white paper prints mounted as cabinet cards, with soft sepia-brown toning, aged cream stock, rounded corners, and a ruled inner border.
Sepia - The warm brown tone of silver sulphide that preserved Victorian portraits through a century and a half.
Cyanotype (1842) - Sir John Herschel's iron-based process. Deep Prussian blue. The print that gave photography the word "blueprint."
Anthotype (1839) - Made from crushed plant pigments. Delicate, fugitive, botanical. The most poetic photographic process ever devised.
Platinum (1873) - The process of fine art portraiture. Cool, shadow-rich, with a tonal range silver could never match.
Autochrome (1907) - The Lumiere brothers' starch-grain colour process. Dreamy, pointillist, the first practical colour photography.
Wet Plate (1851) - The dominant process of the mid-19th century. Cracked emulsion, silver bubbles, edge melt, amber-olive toning.
Bromoil (1907) - Oil-based ink on bleached gelatin. Painterly and stippled, with inky shadows and pale milky highlights.
Lippmann (1891) - Gabriel Lippmann's Nobel Prize-winning interferential process. Warm amber ageing, long-exposure softness, and glass plate scratches from a century of handling.
Infrared (1930s) - Light beyond the visible spectrum. Luminous white foliage, darkened skies, ethereal skin tones. The spectral world captured on heat-sensitive emulsion.
-- WHAT ANCIENT LIGHT CAN DO --
* All four optical lenses - ultrawide (0.5x), wide (1x), 2x, and telephoto (5x) - selectable from the viewfinder
* Shoot once, save many - save multiple historic versions from a single capture
* On iPhone Pro: saves both a filtered JPEG and the original 48MP ProRAW DNG as a paired asset
* Albumen cabinet-card output with warm paper tone, soft print contrast, aged stock texture, rounded card corners, and ruled border
* Infrared process with glowing foliage, dark skies, and spectral black-and-white tonality
* Tintype options - choose regular or square format, with period borders or no borders
* Seven Daguerreotype frame styles plus No Frame, selectable directly from the viewfinder
* Higher-resolution Daguerreotype frame output, scaled to the photo instead of the source frame artwork
* Adjustments apply to the photograph while preserving Daguerreotype frame artwork
* Full adjustment suite - exposure, contrast, highlights, shadows, black point, saturation, vibrance, warmth, sharpness, and vignette
* Auto enhancement with one tap
* Precision crop tool with inset handles and rule-of-thirds grid
* Landscape side-panel layout keeps the image large while all controls stay accessible
* Photographer credit field - your name travels with every saved file in the IPTC metadata
* Process, frame, and Tintype options stored between sessions
* iPhone and iPad, all orientations
* No subscription. No ads. No account required.
Ancient Light is a single purchase. Everything in it is yours.
Quoi de neuf dans la dernière version ?
Ancient Light 1.9 adds Albumen, expands the product page language around Infrared, and carries forward the recent Tintype and Daguerreotype presentation improvements.
NEW ALBUMEN PROCESS
Albumen joins Ancient Light as a twelfth historic process. Inspired by nineteenth-century albumen and cabinet-card prints, it renders a warm sepia-brown paper photograph with softened contrast, fine grain, gentle vignette, and an aged cream card mount.
CABINET-CARD PRESENTATION
Albumen output is treated as an object, not only an image. Finished photos include rounded card corners, subtle paper speckling, a cream stock background, and a ruled inner border around the print.
INFRARED PROCESS INCLUDED
Infrared remains part of the full process set: luminous pale foliage, darkened skies, ethereal skin tones, and spectral monochrome contrast inspired by early infrared-sensitive emulsions.
TINTYPE FORMAT OPTIONS
Tintype supports both regular and square output. Choose Regular for the original camera crop, or Square for a centered plate-style composition.
TINTYPE WITH OR WITHOUT BORDERS
Tintype photos can include worn period plate borders, or use No Borders for a cleaner plate without the sampled edge overlay.
SEVEN DAGUERREOTYPE FRAMES
Daguerreotype includes seven scanned period-style frame choices, plus No Frame: Gaslight Octagon, Parlor Cartouche, Cameo Round, Velvet Reliquary, Aurelian Cameo, Midnight Locket, and Salon Window.
LARGER FRAMED OUTPUT
Daguerreotype frame output scales to the photo instead of being limited by the original frame artwork size, producing larger finished images.
PHOTO-ONLY ADJUSTMENTS
Exposure, contrast, warmth, vignette, and other review adjustments apply to the photograph beneath the Daguerreotype frame. The frame artwork itself stays intact.
This update gives Ancient Light a warmer paper-print voice alongside its metal plates, blueprints, oil prints, color plates, and spectral infrared renderings.
