I watched the ColorPerfect tutorial video and it almost scared me off. It's hard to believe it's any easier or faster than using the tools already available in Photoshop - of course, it's possible the end result may be better. I am still exploring how to get the best results from PS. At some point I might consider ColorPerfect or Negative Lab Pro. After reading more information about light sources. I decided I should probably get a better LED panel before spending money on software. I am reluctant to keep throwing money at my camera copy rig when I have a film scanner that's giving me OK results.
I guess my results are OK. Would you care to comment on the results you get from ColorPerfect compared to the results shown on my web page? Or do you have a link to some of your ColorPerfect conversions?
Do you mean the tutorial video on the official ColorPerfect website? I had a look at that too, and I agree it's not very good. The one I learned my current CP inversion technique from is here:
The author explains the basic key settings well and clearly. If you follow what he does the inversion process itself is actually very easy. I have tried Negative Lab Pro too (version 1.2.1), and personally I found the results wanting (heavy colour casts, way too much contrast by default etc). I understand there is a newer version released now though, which admittedly I haven't tried, and it may be improved. The only real advantage with NLP I can see is that you get to continue working in RAW after the inversion process, which is something you can't do in CP. However that's a minor nitpick, as 16 bit TIFF files still give you massive editing latitude.
Before getting CP I had real problems doing the inversions by hand in PS using RGB curves. No matter what I tried I always got some degree of colour cast; sometimes minor, sometimes heavy, but always there, and it could be a real pain to correct fully. Ektar is especially difficult to manually invert, and I never once got a result I was happy with. CP handles even Ektar without a single hitch. Below is an example of mine shot on Ektar and inverted with CP. Other than a touch of sharpening the only thing I did after the inversion was to add a tiny bit of saturation and warmth to the original colours, which for the effect I wanted were a little on the cool side (but accurately rendered in the CP inversion, as it was shot in a deep, open-shaded gorge). To me, CP would have paid for itself just for the ease of inverting Ektar, let alone all the other stocks.
As for colour temperature of the LED lightboxes, I'm not sure how critical the absolute value would be, as you can always white balance correct the results if digitising using RAW. I imagine the uniformity of the colour temperature across the panel would be more important. The panel I use wasn't very expensive (about £50), and I don't think the manufacturer even states what the CRI is.
I think the examples on your site are good for manual inversions. As for scanner vs camera versions on there it's a little bit of a toss up; I can see colour casts of different types on both. However I still generally prefer the camera versions.
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