Film Specific Colour Profiles and Flex Color

Kuby · Jun 1, 2018

Hello,

I'm curious to know, of those of you out there who use or own imacon/flextight scanners, who uses colour specific film profiles vs. who uses generic profiles?

For the last few years I have been using generic profiles and was getting what I thought were pretty good results. I've seldom been totally satisfied, but I thought the results I was getting were often pretty good. Today, for whatever reason, I thought I would play around with film specific profiles and see what the difference might be. To my surprise, I noticed that the results seemed vastly superior on almost every single frame I experimented with. The gamma values across the RGB channels seemed much more "true", resulting in more pleasing tones, contrast, and colour. I think from now on I will make use of the profiles much more regularly. The film stocks I am scanning were all Portra 160/400 in both 35mm and 120mm formats, and I was making use of the portra NC/VC profiles.

What is the experience of other users out there?

philipus · Jun 8, 2018

Well I use generic profiles because I prefer getting flat and boring scans since I do all post-processing in Adobe Camera Raw, Color Perfect and Photoshop. I tried the built-in film profiles but find that they just don't look like I want my film images to look. It may be that these profiles are how the various films are "supposed to look", but I don't know that. I only know that they don't look particularly good, to my eyes. Since I use Color Perfect for C41 I have a profile built based on some info I found on the CP site to get as "linear scan as possible", which those who know claim isn't as linear as it should be. But it works for me and for all my C41, including that darn difficult Ektar. And then I have one for E6 which is similarly flat and boring and great for post-processing. Your post has made me curious though so I'll play around a bit with the built-in profiles just to see.

br
Philip

Kuby said:
Hello,

I'm curious to know, of those of you out there who use or own imacon/flextight scanners, who uses colour specific film profiles vs. who uses generic profiles?

For the last few years I have been using generic profiles and was getting what I thought were pretty good results. I've seldom been totally satisfied, but I thought the results I was getting were often pretty good. Today, for whatever reason, I thought I would play around with film specific profiles and see what the difference might be. To my surprise, I noticed that the results seemed vastly superior on almost every single frame I experimented with. The gamma values across the RGB channels seemed much more "true", resulting in more pleasing tones, contrast, and colour. I think from now on I will make use of the profiles much more regularly. The film stocks I am scanning were all Portra 160/400 in both 35mm and 120mm formats, and I was making use of the portra NC/VC profiles.

What is the experience of other users out there?

Lachlan Young · Jun 8, 2018

Kuby said:
Hello,

I'm curious to know, of those of you out there who use or own imacon/flextight scanners, who uses colour specific film profiles vs. who uses generic profiles?

For the last few years I have been using generic profiles and was getting what I thought were pretty good results. I've seldom been totally satisfied, but I thought the results I was getting were often pretty good. Today, for whatever reason, I thought I would play around with film specific profiles and see what the difference might be. To my surprise, I noticed that the results seemed vastly superior on almost every single frame I experimented with. The gamma values across the RGB channels seemed much more "true", resulting in more pleasing tones, contrast, and colour. I think from now on I will make use of the profiles much more regularly. The film stocks I am scanning were all Portra 160/400 in both 35mm and 120mm formats, and I was making use of the portra NC/VC profiles.

What is the experience of other users out there?

I avoid all the internal inversions, scan as a positive including some neg rebate & with a slight correction curve on what will become the highlights after the inversion, then do the rest in Photoshop. The critical stages involve sampling & dividing out the mask (as chromogenic paper would see the negative) & manually clipping black & white points following the clipping warnings etc. The colour is astoundingly accurate to the tonalities of the film - ie Portra 400's slight warmth Vs Portra 160 etc. It's harder to describe than do & the results blow away the canned profiles of Flexcolor or Colorperfect. Ektar becomes very well behaved too.

philipus · Jun 22, 2018

This sounds interesting, thanks for explaining Lachlan. Ektar is one of the most tricky emulsions for Flexcolor, as I understand it. Would you mind showing an example or two? I'm not sure I understand the bits about "a slight correction curve on what will become the highlights after the inversion" and "sampling & dividing out the mask (as chromogenic paper would see the negative)".

I scan Ektar using the instrux on Colorperfect's site. Then I 'develop' it in Colorperfect by simply trying to arrive at the most accurate version by cycling through the various starting positions using the Restore Settings button. Then OK out and dust spot in Photoshop before closing the file. I do the remaining processing Adobe Camera Raw.

Lachlan Young said:
I avoid all the internal inversions, scan as a positive including some neg rebate & with a slight correction curve on what will become the highlights after the inversion, then do the rest in Photoshop. The critical stages involve sampling & dividing out the mask (as chromogenic paper would see the negative) & manually clipping black & white points following the clipping warnings etc. The colour is astoundingly accurate to the tonalities of the film - ie Portra 400's slight warmth Vs Portra 160 etc. It's harder to describe than do & the results blow away the canned profiles of Flexcolor or Colorperfect. Ektar becomes very well behaved too.

Lachlan Young · Jun 22, 2018

philipus said:
This sounds interesting, thanks for explaining Lachlan. Ektar is one of the most tricky emulsions for Flexcolor, as I understand it. Would you mind showing an example or two? I'm not sure I understand the bits about "a slight correction curve on what will become the highlights after the inversion" and "sampling & dividing out the mask (as chromogenic paper would see the negative)".

I scan Ektar using the instrux on Colorperfect's site. Then I 'develop' it in Colorperfect by simply trying to arrive at the most accurate version by cycling through the various starting positions using the Restore Settings button. Then OK out and dust spot in Photoshop before closing the file. I do the remaining processing Adobe Camera Raw.

I'll try and make a scan/ screenshots for you, but it'll likely be next week - really busy right now - hope this is not too much of a wait.

Essentially all I'm doing in Flexcolor is taking a scan that uses a curve to make the parts that will become the highlights (ie the densest bits on the negative) behave more linearly (ie open them up a bit) relative to what the internal DSP of Flexcolor does. The rest is done in PS, I only use Camera RAW for noise reduction as a layer if needed. The sample, make & fill layer with mask/ rebate colour, set blending of layer to 'divide' is harder to describe than demonstrate! Remember that the mask in C-41 is inversely proportional & not an overall filter - and that's why dividing it out is the best way to get rid of it.

Film Specific Colour Profiles and Flex Color

Kuby

philipus

Lachlan Young

philipus

Lachlan Young

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