silt

I wanted to bring the sense of black and light I use in drawing to photographs I had taken. Rather than generate a new scene, I built a tool for looking closely at the light already there and choosing what to reveal or leave in shadow.

I began by revisiting black-and-white photographs, studying how small lights, grain and the space behind a subject changed. Those experiments grew into 19 looks across four families: COLOR, MONO, INK and SIGNAL. They do more than imitate the surface of old film; each treats the color, contrast and texture of a scene differently.

The on-device silt Engine analyzes faces, subjects and relative depth, then balances contrast, color, grain and halation. It does not generate new people or backgrounds. I wanted to preserve what was in the photograph while making room to see it differently.