Dehancer for iOS Review
June 11, 2024Dehancer for iOS Review
Intro
Over the past couple months I’ve had the opportunity to try out Dehancer for iOS. For those of you who don’t know, Dehancer makes plugins for photo and video editing applications that include creative tools to achieve and authentic film look. You can get Dehancer for Adobe LR/PS, Capture One, Affinity, Final Cut Pro, Adobe Premiere Pro/After Effects, and Davinci Resolve. So far I’ve been experimenting with Dehancer in both Lightroom and iOS and in this post I’ll be going over my thoughts on the iOS app based on my experience.
The Process
If you happen to be familiar with the Dehancer plugin already for any of the above applications, you’ll find it easy to process your photos with the iOS app. I found it to be quite a bit more simple to edit with the iOS app over the Lightroom plugin. The steps are laid out in order and extremely easy to follow to properly edit using the app.
I’ll go over editing step by step with an example photo below.
Once you’ve imported your image, tap the EDIT tab to begin.
*NOTE: If you reopen the app and import a new photo, Dehancer will automatically apply the previous edit to the photo which can be pretty handy when editing multiple photos in a set. As of now there is not another way to batch edit photos. The photo can easily be reverted to the original state by tapping the left most action on the presets tab.
Swipe the lower section of tools to the very left. You may crop your image as necessary, then adjust the source image. For me, I usually just adjust the EXPOSURE, TEMP and TINT if necessary. In this case, all I needed was to decrease the EXPOSURE slightly. Next, choose your film stock. There are tons to choose from. For me, I often choose Kodak Portra 400 because that’s a film stock I often shoot so I’m somewhat familiar with it. You can also adjust the slider to Push or Pull up to +/- 3 and I’ve included images below to show how the characteristics change the look.
Next, you’re going to want to go to the DEVELOP tab. Here is where I like to add or subtract contrast and in most scenarios, increase the saturation but increasing COLOR BOOST. Kodak Portra is typically a flat and neutral film so adding saturation is essential here. After, head to the COMPRESSION and EXPAND tabs. I don’t often make a lot of changes here but more precise contrast controls can be changed here. I’ll often come back to these two tabs to control my contrast after using making changes in later steps.
The next step adds an additional look to your image in the PRINT tab. Here you can choose different types of papers including Linear, Kodak Endura Glossy (my go to), and two print films, Fujifilm 3513 and Kodak 2383 commonly used for cinema. The print films have a much stronger look that I found will introduce more split toning and contrast. On the COLOR HEAD tab, you can further introduce more colors and split toning in the highlights and shadows. Demonstrated in the photos below, you can control each slider independently, or toggle the Gang switch to toggle all three simultaneously.
The remaining five edit tabs are to creative tools to make your edit emulate various film characteristics including FILM GRAIN, HALATION, BLOOM, VIGNETTE, and FILM DAMAGE. I’ll add a bit of film grain, although I don’t like it too strong. Same goes for halation. I’ll only add some if there are incredibly bright highlights and my preference is to have minimal halation. I find adding just enough to soften the highlights a bit is pleasing. There is no options for sharpness, so I sometimes use the BLOOM tab to soften the image a tad if it’s looking too sharp. VIGNETTE is there to add to your taste as well. There is an option for FILM DAMAGE however, I don’t use this option. You can see an example photo of what this does below, but I opt to go without.
At any time, you can toggle on and off the edits in any particular tab by simple tapping on it. A dot will appear below indicating that the edits are toggle on and will disappear when toggled off meaning no edits are applied. Like I mentioned above, I may go back to some previous tabs to fine tune the contrast and saturation. Once done, tap the share icon to export your photo to your gallery. Below is my final edit on this photo taken on my iPhone 11. It might be time for an upgrade soon.
Samples
All of the sample images below were editing using Dehancer for iOS. The photos are edited from the RAW images transferred directly from my Fujifilm X-Pro3 to my phone via the Fujifilm X App.
Looking back at some of the edits as I write this, I could have added a bit more contrast to a few of them (especially the last one), but overall I’m quite pleased with the colours and how similar they are to actual film.
Price
Dehancer for iOS runs off of a subscription model which is $119.99 (CAD)/year or about $9.99 (CAD)/month. This differs from the one-time pricing model for Dehancer plugins for Mac or desktop PC software.
Pros
As I mentioned earlier, I don’t often shoot or edit photos on my phone but I can now understand a few reasons why one would like to do so. First of all, your phone is always with you which makes it incredibly easy to take photos anywhere and have a powerful device to edit them on the go. If you shoot on a modern camera, chances are you are able to transfer the photos straight to your phone wirelessly. With my Fujifilm X-Pro3, I am able to transfer over full size RAW images to my iPhone and have full control over the editing process. This makes it easy to edit and share photos quickly while on a trip somewhere where I don’t want to have to bring my laptop.
The next thing I really enjoy is the results. The tools in Dehancer are based on the actual film print process meaning that the controls behave a bit less linear when compared to Lightroom’s tools. This gives the overall look of the edit a more filmic touch. Having experience using the Dehancer plugin for Lightroom, I’d say that the controls and tools act pretty much exactly the same. I’m not sure why but I had it in my head that the iOS app may differ slightly. With results that match film a lot better than most presets and apps, Dehancer makes it a great process to match digital photos with film - especially if you are a hybrid shooter like myself.
One final benefit to using Dehancer for iOS is that how you see the image on your phone is accurate to how it will look. Sound confusing? Let me explain. All monitors and screens are different. So if you edit your photos on one screen and export it, that photo may look different in terms of contrast, colour and saturation on another screen. The majority of people these days view content on their phone so it makes it much easier to get the results you want out of the image on your phone if you just edit on your phone. It can be both annoying and time consuming to edit, export, view on the phone and then go back and forth numerous times to get the right colours.
Cons
With such a great app for giving the film look on your photos, it doesn’t come without a few flaws. I’ll address a couple of my biggest issues and how they can improve.
For one, the sliders appear to have quite precise values. I found it somewhat difficult to get the slider exactly where I wanted it with little tolerance. To get more precision it would be great if you could tap, hold and slide down on the screen to gain further fine tune the slider value. So for example, the further your thumb is to the slider, the slower the slider scrubs much like how it works on the music or Spotify app when you want to scrub through the time of the song.
One of the reasons I don’t edit on my phone is that the screen is so small. Unfortunately this is personal preference and isn’t something Dehancer can fix for me. I enjoy using a larger monitor to edit on where I can see everything much more clearly. I find the experience editing on such a small screen to be very poor but I could see it being much better on something like an iPad.
Conclusion
Overall, I’d say Dehancer for iOS is a fantastic tool to use to edit your images with a unique look. With tools including real film stock emulations and a workflow based on the actual film printing process, you are able to get great results on the go. I would also recommend it to anyone who is looking to edit their photos to look like film and get accurate results without having to go back and forth between different screens and your phone as it can be a major time saver.
You can also check out my video on YouTube going through the process of matching my digital files with my film scans using Dehancer for Lightroom
If you are interested in getting Dehancer for yourself, feel free to click the link below and use my code to save some money.
You can try out Dehancer here: https://www.dehancer.com
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