PlateMaker

Digital 1850s plates from RAW

Turn infrared and everyday raw files into 1850s-style plates: glowing foliage, porcelain skin, ruby shadows and gold highlights. Fine-tune, compare, then export.

Coming soon to the Mac App Store

Like a collodion plate

PlateMaker reads the raw sensor data and keeps only the light a collodion glass plate would have captured. Instead of blending colours, it uses just the blue-sensitive sensor sites, so nothing else muddies the picture. All without modifying your camera.

Shooting infrared? Then it keeps the red sites, which see the most infrared through an IR filter.

Three looks

IR PlateInfrared, toned gold and ruby. Foliage glows, skies go dark, skin turns porcelain.

Clean IR B&WThe same infrared extraction in neutral black and white.

Collodion (approx.)Normal files seen the way 1850s plates saw them: dark lips, white skies, pale eyes.

Make it yours

Exposure, contrast, noise reduction, toning, ruby-to-gold balance, vignette and grain. Settings per photo, compare with the original, zoom to 100 %.

Export the way you work

DNG that opens in Adobe Lightroom with the look applied and still editable, or toned 16-bit TIFF and JPEG. Your metadata comes along, with one switch to leave out location and serial numbers.

Private by design

Everything happens on your Mac. No account, no tracking, no internet connection.

Requires a Mac with macOS 14 Sonoma or later. Works with raw files from Bayer-sensor cameras and with DNG, including Lightroom HDR and panorama merges.