The imaginary helicity non-flip ω exchange amplitudes in KN and NN scattering are determined versus t and s from data on elastic differential cross section differences. The ω-universality prediction Im ω N ( t) = 3 Im ω K ( t), is found to be satisfied for 0 ⩽ | t| ⩽ 0.5, indicating that the absorptive cuts at small t preserve universality: The impact parameter distributions of the ω amplitudes show: 1. (i) a peripheral peak centered around b ≈ 1 fm, with Δb ≈ ± 0.5 fm in KN and Δb ≈ ± 0.75 fm in NN; 2. (ii) a sizeable negative contribution at small b, more negative in NN than in KN, 3. (iii) a smaller tail of negative contributions around b ≈ 2 fm. Strong absorption of the ω-pole imaginary amplitude with λ values around two is needed to reproduce this structure. A new version of the absorption model, suggested by πN amplitude analysis, is confirmed by our results.