Film isn't a filter.
Filters paint a look on top of your photo. Film grew the look inside it... silver crystals reacting to light, one by one. Cineon simulates that reaction, in your browser.
Use every effect free. No credit card required.
Loved by 12,000+ photographers — and counting
What makes it different
Film emulation, finally done right.
Physically-based engine
Grain that behaves like silver halide — not a texture overlay.
Cineon models the raw interaction of light and chemistry. Grain reacts to exposure, halation blooms around highlights, and color shifts the way real stock does. Zoom in and it holds up — because it was never painted on.
Infinite effect chains
A look that's yours — not a preset everyone else has.
Build a look from exposure to ACES to halation scattering to zonal grain — then reorder the chain and watch it change. No fixed pipeline, no presets you can't break apart. Every parameter is yours.
Built for speed
Runs in your browser. Switches between images instantly.
Powered by WebGPU — no plugins, no external software, no render queue. Drop a strip of images, flip between them, and see your chain applied in real time. Save presets once and reuse them across every shoot.
Results
Shot once, processed forever.
The honest comparison
Cineon vs. the usual suspects
From the community
People who notice the difference
“I shot film for fifteen years before I went digital, and I gave up trying to get that look back. Cineon is the first thing that didn't feel like a filter — the highlights roll off the way Portra actually does.”
“Dehancer is great until you want to actually customize something. Cineon lets me reorder the whole chain. It's the difference between a preset and a darkroom.”
“Runs in my browser, on a five-year-old laptop, faster than Lightroom opens. I still don't fully believe it.”
“I process a whole roll's worth of scans in the time it used to take me to do three. Switching between images is instant.”
“The grain is the thing. It's not a texture sitting on top — it moves with the exposure. Whoever built this actually shoots film.”
“I cancelled my Lightroom subscription the same week I found Cineon. I wasn't using a tenth of what Adobe charged me for — and the film look was never even part of it.”
“Moved my whole workflow off Dehancer Pro. No more launching a separate app, no more export round-trips. It's all just there, in the tab I already had open.”
Pricing
Pay for the craft, not the subscription trap
Every effect free — no account, no card. Pay only to export.
CINEON Pro
$12.41/mo billed annually
- Watermark-free exports
- Full-resolution exports (no cap)
- 16/32-bit TIFF for color grading
- Unlimited image slots + batch export
- Save & reuse custom presets
- All future in-browser features
Lifetime
Pay onceYours forever. No renewals.
- Everything in Cineon Pro
- All future in-browser features
- Locked-in early-supporter price
Your photos deserve to look like film
We're not building this for everyone. We're building it for the people who notice the difference. Get in early and help shape it.
Use every effect free. No credit card required.
Affiliate program
Love Cineon? Get paid to share it.
Earn 20% on every subscription you refer — recurring for up to 12 months — or up to 25% on lifetime plans. Paid out automatically through Stripe, no minimum.
- 1.
All effects in Cineon run on the iGPU and GPU via WebGPU — including halation, film grain, exposure, bloom, and color science tools. A modern browser with WebGPU support is required: Chrome 113 or later, or Microsoft Edge 113 or later. Firefox and Safari do not yet support WebGPU and are not supported.
- 2.
Cineon runs entirely in your browser — no software to install, no files sent to a server. Your photos stay on your device at all times.
- 3.
Minimum setup: 8 GB RAM and a graphics chip with WebGPU support — such as an Intel Iris Xe, AMD Radeon RX 5000 series, NVIDIA GTX 1060, or Apple M1. For comfortable editing of large RAW files and HDR images, 16 GB RAM and a dedicated GPU — such as an NVIDIA RTX 3060, AMD RX 6700 XT, or Apple M2 Pro — are recommended. Apple Silicon Macs (M1 and later) run Cineon exceptionally well.
- 4.
Every effect in Cineon is processed at the highest internal precision available — the equivalent of a 32-bit professional editing workflow — so there is no quality loss between effects, no matter how many you stack.
- 5.
HDR photos are supported natively, including files from iPhone (HEIC), professional cameras (TIFF), and high-end scanning workflows (OpenEXR). Standard JPEG, PNG, and WebP files are fully supported as well.
- 6.
Export is available in TIFF 16-bit and TIFF 32-bit — lossless formats accepted by Photoshop, Lightroom, Affinity Photo, and other professional software. JPEG, PNG, and WebP export is also available for sharing and web use.
- 7.
Our Film Grain models the actual chemical behavior of silver halide crystals in photographic emulsion — the same underlying science published in peer-reviewed imaging research — rather than applying a simple texture overlay. The result is grain that responds to light, shadow, and color the way real film does.
- 8.
Optical Engine simulates the physical behavior of real camera lenses, including how light bends through glass at different wavelengths. The colored fringing, focus falloff, and bokeh shape you see are derived from ray-by-ray calculations — not artistic presets.
- 9.
Processing speed depends on your computer, the resolution of your photo, and the number of effects active. A draft preview at reduced resolution is always available while the full-quality result is being calculated in the background.
- 10.
Some multi-threaded performance features require a browser context with cross-origin isolation enabled. This is active on cineon.app and has no impact on how you use the app.
- 11.
Cineon is designed for desktop use. A screen width of at least 1280px is recommended for the full editing interface. Mobile browsing is supported for account access and light previewing.