Mastin Labs & Aftershoot are together now.

Bringing my approach to color and film-inspired editing together with a smarter workflow. The presets stay. What changes is how long it takes to get the consistent look across a full gallery.

Dear Mastin Labs Community,

In 2013 I started shooting the same scene twice, once on film, once on digital. Portra, then Fuji. I developed the negatives and scanned them myself on a Fuji Frontier, then worked the digital file by hand until it matched the scan: the color, the grain, the way the highlights rolled off. That's how Mastin Labs started. It started as something I made for myself.

What grew from it wasn't a preset library. It was a community of photographers who wanted their digital files to sit next to their film without anyone noticing the difference.

Over the years, photography and the way we work have continued to evolve. And while my love for film hasn't changed, I started thinking about what Mastin could do next. I saw an opportunity to bring the Mastin look to more photographers and make it possible to apply that look consistently across an entire shoot without tweaking every frame individually. I knew AI could take that part. I also knew what AI usually does to something built by hand, which is flatten it. Every version I'd seen ended with the software deciding how the work should look, and I'd have left the problem unsolved rather than solve it that way.

When I went looking, I found Aftershoot. It’s co-built by Justin Benson, a working photographer, and the AI there doesn’t decide how the work should look. You do. That position is written down and public. That’s when I knew Mastin Labs had found its home.

What doesn't change

• Mastin Labs isn't going anywhere: The film presets stay, for Lightroom and Capture One, and they keep doing what they've always done: letting you match digital to film on any camera you own.
• The community stays: photographers who want their digital work to carry what film gave them still have somewhere to find each other.
• And the education stays: getting exposure and white balance right, knowing which stock suits the light you're in, learning why your edit isn't landing. That's what we've always taught, and it continues.

Where you get the time back. Bring in a full shoot and Aftershoot pulls out the duplicates, the blinks, the frames you'd never deliver. Then a Mastin AI Style goes across what's left, holding as the light changes, the same looks you know, built from the same scans, running on a whole gallery instead of one image at a time. No more sitting at image 437 trying to make it feel like image 12.

Three things were non-negotiable for me. Two of them Aftershoot had already committed to publicly, and the third is mine to keep.

• Your work stays yours: Nothing you shoot, edit, or upload is ever used to train a look for anyone else.

• You’re still deciding: Every edit stays non-destructive, reviewable, and yours to adjust or override. The tool does the repetitive part, not the deciding part.

• The look holds: Every Mastin AI Style comes from my own film presets, not an AI’s best guess at film. Same scans, same decisions, the ones I made by hand in 2013.
  
  

What's left is the work that actually needed you. Mastin brings the look. Aftershoot brings the workflow. Your eye stays yours, and the look stays Mastin.