Accurate Color From Color Negative Film Tutorial - No Plugins

[Alchemy Color]

Hello everyone,

I've invested months in making this free tutorial on how to achieve the best possible quality from color negative scans made at home with a digital camera without using plugins.

https://github.com/alchemy-color/color-negative-inversion

Based on my previous work with digital camera calibration and emulation, I decided to dive into negative film with a mission in mind:

- What could be the most accurate way of capturing and inverting the color negative in the digital domain with simple means such as a DSLR and an iPad backlight?

After extensive measurements and intensive testing, I developed a method that allowed me to scan and invert a Kodak Gold 200 photograph of a ColorChecker SG with a resulting average color similarity DeltaE of around 2.70. This exceptional value serves as a testament not only to the accuracy of the method but also to the virtues of color negative film in terms of its color accuracy.

Thank you to Reddit users Aaron Buchler (u/Ab_film_92) for the inversion technique and Jack Whitaker (u/jrw01) for his informative article on scanner backlights. Both were fundamental in helping me understand where to go with my methods.

Full disclaimer: Close to the end of the video, I promote a product created alongside this research. https://alchemycolor.com/film-emulation/.

Color negative emulation is an innovative method if turning digital images into accurate facsimiles of film negatives and ingesting them into plugins such as Negative Lab Pro or FilmLab.

Looking forward to hearing opinions and seeing your results.

Cheers

[Chrille]

Wow, thank you! 

[Andrew Reid]

Welcome to the forum sir!

[Alchemy Color]

On 12/31/2024 at 5:52 PM, Andrew Reid said:

Welcome to the forum sir!

Thank you!

[eatstoomuchjam]

I just watched (most of) the video.  Very interesting.  Sorry if you addressed it in one of the parts that I skipped, but do you have plans to support emulation of more film stocks than Gold 200?  And are there any plans to release a workflow for video?