A photographic developer for the digital age.
A photograph isn't a set of zones. It's one continuous field of light, highlights bleeding into midtones, shadows rising out of the dark, all of it overlapping.
Latent treats it the same way, not as zones to manage, but as one living thing, handled with kindness.
Develop, don't correct.
Real film and darkroom paper, modeled by how they actually behave — not presets, not filters. The film carries its own grain, colour and halation, then the negative prints onto real paper matched to its chemistry. The same choices you’d make in a lab.
And five scans for the way film comes back from the lab (Noritsu, Frontier, Pakon, flatbed, DSLR).
Four stages, in the order you actually make a photograph. Source, interpretation, realization, mend.
Start in Origin, Latent's own blend. Then put it through emulsion: forty-seven film stocks, five chemistries (C-41, ECN-2, E-6, K-14, B&W), five scanners. The negative develops, the enlarger prints, the paper holds the image. Halation, grain physics, push and pull, and a latitude indicator that reads off the stock you picked.
Exposure, the four lights (Highlights, Shadows, Whites, Blacks), and a tone curve with L, R, G, B channels and a live histogram. Then Structure: Depth for how forms separate, Surface for the texture of skin and stone and fabric. Then Dye Density, four sliders that handle color the way film does (Intensity, Retention, Separation, Purity), never one flat saturation knob. And finally Color, an eight-channel densitometer plate over a rainbow strip. None of it as zones, all of it as one field.
The Enlarger sets paper grade, contrast, and density. The Paper brings its own base and finish, with control over how the print settles into its blacks. The Wash is a split-tone that warms or cools shadows, midtones, and highlights on their own, a real darkroom toner. The Fall-Off burns light at the edges of the frame the way an enlarger naturally would. Texture lays a plate of real film grain (35mm, 16mm, 500T, 8mm) across the print. A Gallery Finish frame, if you want one. Then Deliver, Quick Export, or Export Catalogue for the whole batch.
Spotting brush, clone stroke, the work you'd normally leave the app to do. After the print is realized, this is where you lift the dust, tidy the small distractions, and get the photograph ready.
Strike a test strip, pick the exposure, dodge and burn, split the grade. The Ritual keeps the part of the darkroom where prints are actually made.
Latent carries a photograph the whole way, from RAW to a finished print, without ever leaving the app. Library, contact sheet, developer, retoucher, soft-proof, export. It's all in here.
Switching from Lightroom or Capture One? Your ratings, labels, keywords and captions come over. Your photographs start fresh, as negatives.
One photograph is a frame. A sequence, paired into spreads, paced with breath pages, opened with a cover, becomes a photo essay. You build it in the Light Table, and it reads like a book.
Then it breathes.
The Ritual is for the photographs you sit with. The Moment is for the ones you catch in passing. Same engine, different instrument.
Step inside →Ritual on Mac and iPad. Moment on iPhone.
Ritual on Mac and iPad, plus Moment on iPhone.
Notify me at launchFirst 90 days only. Regular annual pricing will be $149/year.
Notify me at launchA focused iPhone darkroom for developing photographs in the moment.
Notify me at launchLatent Suite annual renews at $149/year after the founding launch period.
At launch: a 14-day free trial, no credit card required.