A film-emulation photo editor for iPhone · Runs in the browser, installs to the home screen

C41 is a film-emulation photo editor that runs entirely in the browser and installs to the iPhone home screen as a PWA. Pick a photo, then layer a film stock (colour, tone, grain, halation) and a camera (lens character, vignette, format, borders), plus effects like light leaks, dust and an LED date stamp. Save the result at full resolution. Nothing leaves the device.

Live demo: https://jonobail.github.io/c41/

Features

• 51 film stocks: colour negative, B&W, slide, cinema and specialty. 27 of them are calibrated against statistics of real photos shot on that stock (calibration/).
• 31 cameras: classic SLRs, rangefinders and compacts, plus Lomography cameras with fisheye, multi-lens sequence grids, panoramas over the sprocket holes and colour-gel flash.
• Looks: one-tap recipes, and Match a photo, which fits a film to any reference photo on the device.
• Full-resolution export: renders in strips and streams into a JPEG encoder running in a worker, so 24–48 MP iPhone photos save without hitting iOS canvas limits. The original capture date is kept in EXIF.

Run

No build step, no runtime dependencies: it's static files and ES modules.

npm install        # dev only: Playwright for tests / icon rendering
npm run serve      # http://localhost:8080  (PORT=… to change)
npm test           # unit tests;  node tests/*.browser.mjs for browser checks

Service workers (offline use) and Save to Photos need HTTPS. See docs/IOS.md for testing on an iPhone over Tailscale and installing to the home screen.

Docs

• docs/ARCHITECTURE.md: module contracts and the render/export pipeline
• docs/FILM_STOCKS.md: the film inventory, with traits and parameters
• docs/LOMOGRAPHY_CAMERAS.md: Lomography camera research and emulation specs
• docs/LOOKS.md: Looks and Match a photo
• calibration/README.md: how films and cameras are fitted to real photos

Film and camera names are used only to describe the looks being emulated. C41 isn't affiliated with any film or camera maker. The calibration reference photos are downloaded locally to compute statistics and aren't included in this repository.

The screenshot photo is "Hikers Enjoying Sunset" by Joshua Tree National Park (NPS), public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.