Northlight DP

Northlight DP

Cinematography lighting design

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Free

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Details

  • Released
  • Updated
  • July 22, 2026
  • August 15, 2026

Features

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About

Northlight predicts how your lights will actually render on camera — before you roll. If you light people for a living — cinematographers, gaffers, DPs, camera operators, and serious content creators — you know the guesswork. A fixture's box-spec Kelvin is a claim, mixed sources fight each other, and you burn set time on white-balance tests instead of shooting. Northlight replaces the guesswork with real color science: tell it your fixtures, your camera, and the look you want at the subject, and it solves how every source renders at your camera's white balance — then hands you the exact Kelvin and tint to set on each light and the white balance to set on the camera. It's a planning instrument, not a control surface. Northlight computes the targets; you dial them into your own gear by hand. Nothing to connect, no accounts, no subscriptions. — Design the look Place your fixtures on a top-down plan around your subject, set each one's color and intensity, and dial the look you want at the face. Northlight solves it live: the combined color at the subject, the key-to-fill contrast ratio, and the illuminance, with warm/cool and gel-equivalent read-outs. A master level fader and a subject color dial push the whole look while your ratios hold. — Calibrate with your phone A fixture's nominal Kelvin is a claim; a measurement is the truth. In the Measure tab, point your iPhone at a grey card under a light and Northlight reads how it really renders — median-aggregated across frames, held steady by a stability gate — and records it against that fixture. From then on your predictions match the gear you actually own, not the marketing spec. — See it rendered On ray-tracing-capable Apple silicon, a path-traced preview shows a head lit by your exact setup: real perspective from your camera's spot, your chosen lens, a skin tone or neutral clay reference, bounce cards and negative fill, windows and room bounce. Read the modeling and the color cast before you're on set. Every other feature works without ray-tracing hardware. — Three ways to balance Camera-locked holds your white balance and re-dials your bi-color sources to reach the look. Follows-subject anchors the camera to the mix at the face. Explore sweeps every lever at once. Pick the instrument that fits your intent. — Yours, everywhere Your fixture and camera libraries and every saved look sync across iPhone, iPad, and Mac over iCloud, automatically, in your own iCloud account. No account to create, no sign-in, no ads, no analytics, no data collection. The camera is used only on your device to meter a grey card — no images ever leave it. Northlight opens on a ready-made Demo look, so you can start experimenting immediately. Northlight is an independent product and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to any manufacturer named in the app. Product names are used for identification and compatibility reference only, and catalog values are published nominal specifications — measure your own units for accuracy.
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What's New in Northlight DP

1.0.5

August 15, 2026

• Studio opens showing everything on the Mac. • A new Ebony skin tone extends the preview presets to deep, melanin-rich complexions. • The contrast readout's top band now reads "noir" instead of the film-jargon "low-key" — same 9:1-and-up territory, clearer at a glance. • Skin now reads like skin under bounced light: light a face off a wall or a window behind it and it keeps its soft, warm subsurface glow — before, the slider only worked when light hit the face directly. • Window light got real: pick a sunny time of day and a hard, warm shaft of sun falls through the window — a patch of light on the floor, barred by the frame and glazing, over a soft cool sky fill. • Lens and aperture now sit side by side above the camera settings • Looks, your way: browse saved looks as the familiar list or as bigger cards with a proper plan preview — room walls, camera spot and colour-true source dots. Pin favourites and they hold the front of the line on every device. • The Library grew into wide screens: • Colour slider tracks now show the truth: each one is painted with the colours that dial will actually produce on screen at the current camera white balance — so a daylight source that's going to read warm shows warm, right on the slider. • Steadier Studio: pushing the colour target past the camera's WB dial no longer pops a warning block into the panel mid-drag — the Renders readout shows a compact "pinned" note (hover it for the full story), so nothing below ever jumps. • Light or dark, your call: a new appearance switch in the window's top bar flips the whole app between light and dark — or follows the system. • A roomier control surface: every Studio slider — fixtures and the at-the-subject panel — now runs the full width with larger icons, brighter readouts and more breathing room. Colour sliders paint their own track, and blue is reserved for level. • Subsurface glow now stays honest in shadow: bright spots no longer appear around the eyes, nose or ear edges on the dark side of the face — including behind negative fill — while thin features still catch a natural translucent glow. • Skin's subsurface glow now softens the shadow line instead of sharpening it — turn it up and hard light falls off across the cheek the way real skin does, warm through the transition. • Paint sheen for your walls, floor and ceiling — flat, eggshell, satin, semi-gloss or gloss. A flat wall bounces broad, forgiving fill; a glossy one throws a hot spot you can see coming and place before you get there. • Flags and negative fill now take the room down with them: put one in front of a source and it cuts the bounce off the walls too, not just the light on your subject — so subtracting fill works the way it does on set. • Skin now renders like skin, not clay: surfaces pick up a real sheen from the light and the room, with softer, warmer shadows in the creases of the face. • Bounced light now carries its colour: a warm lamp off a green wall lands warm and green on your subject, so a bounce-lit setup predicts the way it really renders. • Truer room bounce: light now bounces around the room the way it really does, so a fixture aimed at a wall lights your subject off that wall — even when it takes two bounces to get there — while keeping the shaping and form on the face. • Contrast-ratio overlay on the preview: badges on the face sides and each visible wall, joined by colour-coded links that show the ratio between them at a glance — face side to side, face to wall, and wall to wall — each spot metered like a light meter held right there. • Barn doors: add them to any light and drag the four leaves closed to flag spill — the preview shows the beam shaped, just like on set. • More lights in the library: Godox LP-Series and LITEMONS LP800Bi panels. • New looks now start from a clean two-light setup instead of every fixture at once. And much, much more.

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