Digital workflow to emulate film

[marco_landini]

<p>Hi. I like the film look. I mean the 3d depth of scene, the natural focus fall-off, and so on. I like also those signature film looks, like velvia, kodachrome, tri-x etc...<br />I have nikon d90 dslr and I shoot always raw (nef). Then, I convert the raw's to 16 bit tiff's using Capture nx2. Then, I do the most of my editing on ps cs3. On ps, I have plug-ins like alien skin exposure and nikon silver efex, to emulate contrast, tone and grain of specific films. This is my question : I know it's better to do the most possible adjustments on raw image, just before raw to tiff conversion, in capture nx2, and do in photoshop only the editings that are not possible on raw converter and that require layers. Also, to add sharpening in ps, not before raw to tiff conversion. So, I have alien skin exposure and silver efex as photoshop plugins, and I can' t using them before raw to tiff conversion. Now, have I to use capture nx2 only for raw to tiff conversion, without making any tonal and contrast correction at this stage, and doing these corrections only in ps by the plugins ? If I do tonal and contrast corrections ( curves, saturation, level ecc...) first on capture nx2, then the further application of alien skin or silver efex in ps, woudl be an overkill or ruin the final intent ? And about sharpening : I love the tonal contrast effect ( hi radius, low amout), but I' m very scared to use capture sharpening and output sharpening, as the image could look too cold, without the natural look and focus decay tipical of film, and with the subject pasted to the background as a photomontage. . What do you suggest ? Thank you. Marco.</p>

[jonathan_montague]

<p>if your only printing your pictures small or using them online none of this matters.<br>

the simple answer is buy an old film camera and start shooting. you may learn more than you realised!</p>

 

[bryanwaddington]

<p>Hi Marco,</p>

<blockquote>

<p>...woudl be an overkill or ruin the final intent ?</p>

</blockquote>

<p>I suggest to try it out and decide for yourself if you have ruined the final intent. I don't mean that rudely but you seem to know what you are doing and the steps you want to take in processing your images and at the end of the day only you can decide if your processing is overkill and you have ruined the final intent.</p>

<p>Don't be afraid to sharpen. Capture sharpenning is important to overcome some of the softness introduced by the anti aliasing filter on your sensor and to sharpen according to the content of your image. Output sharpenning is required to render a sharp image on whatever output device your image is intended for and depends entirely on that, so sharpenning would be different for different types of printing and different for screen for example.</p>

<p>Bryan</p>

[marco_landini]

<p>I use to do capture sharpenign with focus magic or photokit. Output sharpening with photokit. All the 2 actions at the final stages of the editing.<br />About tone and contrast corrections in capture nx and photoshop : if I do curve corrections, adjusting contrast and saturation yet on capture nx, and then, with alien skin or silver efex in ps I will add a second curve and tone adjustement...So, I had better not to adjust curves at all in capture nx, and let all the work to photoshop plugins only ?</p>

[Spearhead]

<blockquote>

<p>I mean the 3d depth of scene, the natural focus fall-off</p>

</blockquote>

<p>The difference you are probably seeing has to do with sensor size. Get a full-frame dSLR or learn to do gradient focusing in Photoshop if you want this. It has nothing to do with the medium.</p>

[steve m smith]

<p>At a trade show a few years ago, someone asked a Kodak representative how to make his files look more film like. The response: "have you tried film?"</p>

[Spearhead]

<p>This is the Digital Darkroom Forum. Either make comments that answer the question or choose another forum. (Speaking as the moderator.)</p>

[digitaldog]

<p>The main problem I have with plug-in’s and presets that ‘emulate’ film is, its so subjective. So is boasting saturation or vibrance automatically Velvia? Adding some grain? If you the image creator thinks it looks like film, it looks like film but your customer or others? All bets are off. I’d like to see a real, scientific analysis (if that’s even possible) whereby a film capture and digital capture match such that no one can tell them apart. Then I suppose one could say “<em>that digital looks like film</em>” (or would the statement be “t<em>hat film looks like digital</em>”?)</p>

[Dave Luttmann]

<p>For B&W, nothing beats Silver Efex Pro. For color, check out the sofrtware frpom Nik and Alien Skin. That said, you can get pretty decent grain from Lightroom. Shoor a few test rolls of blue sky, and even shadow, and scan them. The view the scans on screen and match the grain look vie the sliders in Lightroom. I do this to get closer to Fuji Pro 400H. It's not perfect, but I've been able to have some digital shots from my D700 slide seamlessly into a series of Fuji Pro 400H shots....or pretty seamlessly.</p>

<p>The focus fall off, or DOF you are seeing probably comes from those using a FF camera vs a crop camera. It has little to do with the medium. </p>

<p>What you can't mimic is the latitude and dynamic range obtainable in some negative materials.</p>