Building Trustworthy Black & White Workflows
BWConverter exists so photographers can control every tonal decision without surrendering files to remote infrastructure. We combine professional shooting experience, reproducible research, and transparent privacy practices in one accessible tool.
Statement of Intent
“We promise studio-grade conversions, intelligible controls, and absolute transparency about how your images are handled. Every preset, curve, and export option ships with public documentation so you can audit what happens to your pixels.”
Why Creative Teams Choose BWConverter
Privacy Before Profit
Images stay on-device. We publish quarterly privacy audits showing zero third-party transfers.
GPU-Tuned Speed
Our WebAssembly pipeline renders live previews in under two seconds on mainstream hardware.
Studio-Level Control
Six preset baselines plus manual curves and grain emulate darkroom techniques without a learning cliff.
Community Feedback Loop
Every release incorporates interviews with portrait studios, art directors, and archivists.
How We Got Here
Each release cycle pairs engineering sprints with photographer-led testing. The timeline below highlights the research checkpoints that shaped BWConverter.
Research Sprint
Paper prototyping begins after surveying 120 photographers about cloud-processing pain points.
WebAssembly Engine
First release of our Rust-to-WASM tonal pipeline with deterministic previews under 2 seconds.
Batch Worker
Studios gain the ability to convert entire galleries locally with presets synced between sets.
Monochrome Research Hub
Launched blog + resource library documenting case studies, lighting recipes, and preset breakdowns.
Meet the Team
Sivan Lee
Founder & Lead Photographer
Former Leica Academy instructor, 18 years shooting monochrome campaigns across Asia.
Directs creative research and authors our editorial education series.
Dr. Maya Noor
Principal Algorithm Engineer
PhD in Computer Vision, NTU; published work on adaptive tone mapping for high dynamic range images.
Designs luminance curves and ensures GPU kernels stay deterministic.
Jonas Petrov
Privacy & Compliance Lead
Former GDPR consultant for creative agencies; CIPP/E certified.
Runs privacy audits, writes data-handling policy, and maintains ads.txt governance.
Aiko Tan
Product Designer
Ex-Adobe XD team, specialised in accessibility-first design systems.
Leads UI prototyping and ensures slider interactions meet WCAG standards.
What Powers BWConverter
We maintain a transparent engineering log so creative teams can trust the tonal science behind every preview and export.
Processing Stack
Rust image core compiled to WebAssembly, orchestrated by React and Web Workers for concurrency. No libraries with telemetry.
Tone Science
Adaptive luminance maps combine YUV transforms with contrast-aware gamma adjustments tested against 4,000 reference frames.
Quality Assurance
Every release is regression-tested against a public dataset of portrait, architecture, and editorial shots with delta-E tracking.
Research & Resources
Connect With The Team
Whether you want to audit our technology, feature BWConverter in the press, or suggest a preset, we welcome the conversation.