Negative Lab Pro

[Daniel.E]

This is it! All in Lightroom and excellent skin tones with little work. I’ve been playing with this plugin and it’s amazing!

Here’s a video of how it works https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Jmfpxaz17w

https://www.negativelabpro.com/download/

I’m in no way associated with the creator but good ideas need to get out there. This plugin is fantastic!

 

[ColSebastianMoran]

Yup... Nearly automatic, quite good color. By Nathan Johnson. It's not fully released, but download, install, follow the instructions. Manual is a little thin. But, this LR plug-in works.

Here below is my standard test box scene, familiar colors, shot on Fuji 200 film in bright direct sunlight. Then camera-scan with a Sony. See this thread for a host of approaches for converting the RAW file.

This conversion used Negative Lab Pro settings: Noritsu (emulates the color from that scanner), Pre-Sat 2 (check the manual), Standard. Then the usual sliders for dark, light, and mid-tones.

 

[brbo]

Col, have you scanned this negative on an actual Noritsu, Fuji or Pakon scanner?

The above inversion doesn't look right to me.

 

[ColSebastianMoran]

Col, have you scanned this negative on an actual Noritsu, Fuji or Pakon scanner?

The above inversion doesn't look right to me.

Thanks for the question. What doesn't look right to you?

Here's a capture of the original scene in the moment, in same light, with an A6000. Processed the RAW in Lightroom, Camera-Neutral profile.

 

[ColSebastianMoran]

The above inversion doesn't look right to me.

I've got C-41 negatives of this scene on Fuji 200 and on Ektar. I have the digital capture in the moment. I've done various camera-scans of the negatives, run it through Coolscan/Vuescan and I have a lab scan (Noritsu scan by Precision). My overall take: There's no precision in color, the red Coke can is especially difficult, the green whiskey bottle is easy, the Kodak yellow/gold is variable. Easy to make the Color-Checker neutral.

One conclusion: Nearly automatic processes from a camera-scan, especially with just a little manual touch up, are better than the presumably fully automatic Noritsu scan. YMMV.

All you camera-scanners, I do suggest you download and try out Nathan's wares. Free trial, limited to a dozen scans. Best regards to all.

 

[ColSebastianMoran]

I'll see if I can post a Pakon scan for comparison.

 

[ColSebastianMoran]

Found it. Here's a Pakon scan. I think the camera-scan inversions, with a little touchup, are better than this or the Noritsu from the lab.

 

[Scottboarding]

Just downloaded the trial and tried it on some Portra 400 and Agfa Vista 200. Both scanned raw in Silverfast. I like it a lot! Still not sure if I'm going to buy it, but it is quite nice.

Portra 400


Agfa Vista 200

 

[nickthetasmaniac]

All you camera-scanners...

This popped up today in my various feeds and looks interesting, but I'm trying to figure out if it's specifically for camera scanning, or would it be of value for processing home flat-bed scans?

 

[ColSebastianMoran]

This popped up today in my various feeds and looks interesting, but I'm trying to figure out if it's specifically for camera scanning, or would it be of value for processing home flat-bed scans?

Yes, it is advertised as useful to process flat-bed scans.

For camera scans, clear to me that it's better than what we get from the mini-lab.

 

[danitoma]

So I've been playing with the demo for the last couple of days and have to agree this is a fantastic piece of software. And something I really wanted for a long time, to be able to stay in lightroom as much as possible and not having to create bloated (make) tiff files for every single photo.

After testing quite a few actions for photoshop and buying Colorperfect, Colorperfect was the definative winner for me, although hard to understand all the options and the design. But Negative Lab Pro gives at least equal and for many photos I've tested so far a better result with a much simpler interface.

One thing I would really like to see added to the plugin is a white balance dropper just like lightroom. For some photos there needs to be fiddled with the color sliders quite a bit to get rid of a colour cast, and a dropper would speed this up a lot.

This is probably very complex to make, and I understand there is the possibility to make a tiff copy to edit further in LR (or PS), but as I mentioned before I'd prefer not creating tiff files when possible.

The only real issue I've run into so far is that sometimes the reds are not really red but more magenta. This is more severe in some films than others and also visible in Col. Sebastian's test shots. All PS actions I've tried had much worse color issues, and Colorperfect is not perfect either, it can give quite muddy greens. But to me the muddy greens are less objectionable and easier to correct/minimize.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1y1wJ7NjUm2cSY6dmly5uMDQleZgjLV4n

In the photos in the link the issue with red is clear in the sweater and the toys. The other picture the colours of the guitars are more natural (and accurate) in the colorperfect version. These are more orange, but to me orange is a bit reddish still, so it might be part of the same problem.

It's of course possible the problem lies with me and I just don't know how to use the plugin or how to correct the cast!

TLDR: fantastic plugin, some issues (for me) but very high on my to purchase list

 

[dubesor]

http://natephotographic.com/dslr-film-scanning-perfect-color-negatives/#equipment-software - Check out the image comparisons in this post (granted it's from the tool's author but STILL!). Blows the other techniques out of the water. I'm excited to try my own and for others to post their Negative Lab Pro images - either here or on the big DSLR scan thread at https://www.rangefinderforum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=161028

 

[Huss]

I will definitely try this out!

 

[firstnate]

Hi guys - Nate Johnson here, author of Negative Lab Pro.

I've been a lurker here at rff for a while, so it's kind of surreal to see discussions about something I built!

I'm happy to answer any questions you guys have about Negative Lab Pro and how it works, or also see if there are ways that I can improve it? I really want Negative Lab Pro to be the absolute best tool for converting and editing color negatives, and a lot of the features you already see were ideas from beta users (adjustable Auto-Color, Tone Profiles, CMY color balancing... all ideas from users!)

Just to answer a few questions I've already seen in this thread:

- Does it work with flatbed scans? YES - although I don't have color model calibrations yet. You should still give great results, just won't be as close to Frontier and Noritsu as is possible to get with DSLR profiles at the moment.

- Issue with red being overly magenta (and overly saturated) sometimes: Yes, aware of this and there is a fix... this is an artifact of the way the channel independent tone curves work in LR, and will be most noticeable on intense reds in scenes with high contrast added. Basically, because Lightroom doesn't have luminosity curves, the addition of the contrast is added saturation and changing hue (particularly in reds). To correct for this, unconvert and lower your "pre-saturation" in Negative Lab Pro to "1". Then reconvert. If it is still overly magenta, go to saturation in the HSL panel, use the color picker, and drag down on the red in your picture... this will both tone saturation AND warm up the red hue (because of the way it acts on the original negative).

Any more questions or suggestion? Let's hear it!

 

[bayernfan]

i'm pretty impressed so far. the "noritsu" mode, linear, with some minor tweaking creates a fantastic starting point for colors. great job Nate.

 

[danitoma]

Hello Nate,

first thanks for your hard work and fantastic plugin.

I've tried the fix you mentioned for the reds and get drastic improvements. I wasn't sure if your solution should be done on a converted raw file or on a tiff copy. But am glad to say it works on a converted raw, no need for tiffs! The only thing I found is that I actually had to pull the color picker up. Some playing around with the aqua and blue sliders in the HSL tabs worked great and gave further improvements.


While I first thought that I would use colorperfect on the photos where the reds where messed up, i don't see any reason to do that right now. Extremely happy that a complete negative workflow can be done non-destructively on the raws in lightroom!

Would it be possible to get a white balance dropper in the plugin, before the conversion? As I've mentioned, I'd prefer to keep the workflow on the raws, without copies, and the white balnace dropper from lightroom does not work well after conversion.

And what are your plans for the plugin? Will it be a single release, or will updates keep coming. And would they be "included" with the original license or bought seperatly? (And I gladly invest money for such a great and usefull thing). Somewhere on this site I saw someone mention that it is not yet ready for release at the moment, but can't find that message right now. Is this true and if so, can you give an indication when the release version can be bought?

T

 

[danitoma]

Oh, one other thing came to mind. At the moment it is not possible to zoom in or out in the plugin. If this could be made possible it would be great. That way playing with the dark and light sliders could be done zommed in on shadow or highlight area and a compleet overview can be used to judge the conversion.

Thanks again!

 

[ColSebastianMoran]

- Issue with red being overly magenta (and overly saturated) sometimes: Yes, aware of this and there is a fix... this is an artifact of the way the channel independent tone curves work in LR, and will be most noticeable on intense reds in scenes with high contrast added. Basically, because Lightroom doesn't have luminosity curves, the addition of the contrast is added saturation and changing hue (particularly in reds). To correct for this, unconvert and lower your "pre-saturation" in Negative Lab Pro to "1". Then reconvert. If it is still overly magenta, go to saturation in the HSL panel, use the color picker, and drag down on the red in your picture... this will both tone saturation AND warm up the red hue (because of the way it acts on the original negative).

Nate thank you for this. The red Coke can is the toughest color in my test box, for all approaches to inverting the camera-scan of C-41 negatives.

Will try it.

 

[ColSebastianMoran]

Readers: Nate Johnson has now release Negative Lab Pro

Free trial and purchase available at: https://www.negativelabpro.com

Also, there is a Facebook group for this product. Join, then post examples and questions there.

 

[Pete B]

Hi Nate, or anyone else who has the facility to try this, will the plugin work with a Vuescan DNG file from a C41 scan with the scanner in Transparency scanning mode?
Pete