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Charlie Croker

macrumors member
Original poster
Jan 7, 2010
59
0
I would like to use my Nikon DSLR and Nikon ES-2 for scanning in my old film collections, be it slide, BW negative or colour negative, all 35mm. I like the idea of using a DSLR as opposed to a scanner, many have found the results to be extremely good on full frame, with amazing sharpness and a much faster workflow. Slide and black and white negatives are reasonably easy to deal with but colour negatives, the orange mask and the variation of colour film stock makes it a more difficult proposition. There is an ideal piece of software called Negative Lab Pro, which I have yet to use but looks terrific, allowing you to make changes in RAW, which would be my preference. The only thing is it only works as a plug-in for Lightroom, and I am making a determined effort to leave Adobe behind, and I don't want Lightroom or Photoshop to be part of the solution. So what's left? There's Nikon's Capture NX-D, Affinity Photo, DxO PhotoLab, Capture One, Luminar, but I'm struggling to find anyone online discussing a methodology away from Photoshop that deals with 35mm colour negatives in a semi-automatic manner along the lines of Negative Lab Pro, only working your way through the usual Levels which I am never going to have enough time to do. There's ColorPerfect, which lets you work in TIFF from a linear scan, but is also mainly a plug-in for Photoshop or Photoline. So my question is, are there any film photographers out there who have found a terrific workflow for dealing with 35mm colour negatives on the computer away from Adobe. Thanks very much.
 
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