Filmomat Smart Convert

Andreas Thaler · Nov 9, 2023

Has anyone already tested the newly released Filmomat Smart Convert for converting negatives?

Information according to the manufacturer:

„CONVERTING NEGATIVES MADE EASY.

FOR COLOR, B/W, NEGATIVES AND SLIDES.

A STANDALONE TOOL - NO ADDITIONAL SOFTWARE REQUIRED.

NO SUBSCRIPTION. BUY ONCE, USE FOREVER.“

Filmomat — SmartConvert Negative Conversion Software

Convert DSLR-scanned negatives easy and fast with Filmomat SmartConvert. The new standalone tool for negative conversion.

www.filmomat.eu

John Wiegerink · Nov 9, 2023

It seems a little high in cost for what it does. It might be alright if you didn't have another photo editing software.

runswithsizzers · Nov 9, 2023

The website says, “The processing algorithm is designed to preserve the essence of film, by explicitly avoiding any artificial altering of the image.”

What is “the essence of film”? If we can agree that Kodak Ektar has a different “look” compared to Fuji Superia, for example, then how does the software know which film look to target?

Steven Lee · Nov 10, 2023

@runswithsizzers I am interpreting this as a jab at NLP which bends RGB curves absolutely arbitrarily trying to generate a pleasing image. Perhaps their inversion is based on a density and gamma characteristics of an RA4 paper with automatic white balance.

I just downloaded the demo and I am super impressed with the results. In fact, I am tempted to say this is the best converter I've tried to date. And it's the only one which doesn't require Adobe.

koraks · Nov 10, 2023

Steven Lee said:
Perhaps their inversion is based on a density and gamma characteristics of an RA4 paper with automatic white balance.

I don't think that mechanism holds up if you start to think it through in terms of what RA4 paper is, how its curves look, what the meaning of 'density' is, etc.
To be honest, I think @runswithsizzers has a valid point in that this isn't going to preserve any 'essence of film' beyond the grain that will have carried over into the scan and maybe a little crossover at the toe & shoulder.

But...it looks pretty neat and although I haven't tried it yet, I do like the simple UI, the relevant controls offered and the apparent ease of use. If it's as good as you say @Steven Lee, I think it's actually progress on this front, and may be well worth the money for those who regularly scan their color negatives.

Andreas Thaler · Nov 10, 2023

From my point of view, it is an advantage that the software does not require a host program (Photoshop, Lightroom).

I'm excited to see what results I can achieve with it.

silvergelatin · Nov 10, 2023

I have both NLP and Negmaster, and just downloaded the Filmomat demo. First off, the conversion is super neutral. Much better than most results I get from the other two. The problem though is that there is no way to apply lens corrections. This is the downside of all these programs that seek to liberate users from Adobe, but then don't offer the critical base functionality that Adobe offers. So I won't be buying it until they grow a bit more. But I hope they do, because, the conversion was super clean and fast, and the auto crop is great.

I also hope they and some options to protect from blocking up shadows or blowing highlights. The flat and neutral presets are good, but the density and contrast controls are rather violent.

shijan · Nov 10, 2023

It works in its own way. Seems it convert any input to some own color space and process image in that color space. Imported RAW looks near the same as imported tiff (debayered with disabled color management and assigned to custom made input profile made with IT8.7 target). This is rather unusual behave because LibRAW input profiles (guess it use LibRAW?) are very very different from my custom made input profile and so processed result also different.
Also sort of disadvantage that it is fully automatic, so it is impossible pick black and white point to detect RGB levels.
Anyway it is nice additional app to see some variation of film negative processing and compare.

shijan · Nov 10, 2023

It also looks thtange to me that if i create tiff debayered with disabled color management and import it in Filmomat Smart Convert without any input ICC profile - result looks the same as if i use same tiff file but with proper assigned custom made input icc profile...

Andreas Thaler · Nov 10, 2023

shijan said:
It also looks thtange to me that if i create tiff debayered with disabled color management and import it in Filmomat Smart Convert without any input ICC profile - result looks the same as if i use same tiff file but with proper assigned custom made input icc profile...

Can color management actually be applied to color negative film? As far as I know, there are no targets for the scanner?

shijan · Nov 10, 2023

Input profile and color management applied to the camera. it is not something special to negative film itself. Things are perfect when you create custom made ICC profile specially for your camera+light source setup. I use custom made Well Behaved Input ICC created based on this guide https://ninedegreesbelow.com/photography/well-behaved-camera-profile.html

shijan · Nov 10, 2023

Some requests, just in case if developer can read this:
Use neutral gray background.
Allow to change background brightness, or use quick toggle - dark gray/light gray
Support legacy macOS version. Therer are millions of people who remained with 10.14.6 Mojave due many software and especially professional hardware reasons.

runswithsizzers · Nov 10, 2023

The Filmomat website says their Smartconvert supports:
"All common RAW files as well as TIFF files are supported."
Has anyone tried it with a Fuji RAF file from a camera with an X-Trans sensor?
---

silvergelatin said:
The problem though is that there is no way to apply lens corrections.

Since the Smartconvert software supports TIFF files, I wonder if you could first open your RAW file in Adobe Camera RAW or Lightroom (which should do the lens corrections) and then export the file as a TIFF for the color conversion?
---

The Filmomat website says it's for "COLOR, B/W, NEGATIVES AND SLIDES"
I wonder what it could possibly do for slides (that could not be done as good or better in any other film editing software)?
---

The price is shown as 99 Euro, and "All prices incl. 19% VAT, excl. shipping costs."
Hopefully, there will be no shipping costs for downloaded software, but what about that VAT? Are customers in the USA required to pay that? I just sent them an email asking about the VAT for orders from the US.

koraks · Nov 10, 2023

runswithsizzers said:
Hopefully, there will be no shipping costs for downloaded software, but what about that VAT? Are customers in the USA required to pay that?

No. The seller should be able to offer you an ex-VAT sale if you purchase from outside the EU.
You are probably required by US tax law to pay VAT locally, but I don't know your tax law and I also don't know if anyone is bothering with actually monitoring such purchases. Technically you're importing and that tends to involve the duty to pay taxes, including VAT, but it depends on where you live, what you buy, from where, etc.

Nitroplait · Nov 10, 2023

I currently use another standalone tool for my conversions: FilmLab software which works both on Win/Mac and iOS/Android. The license allows use on all platforms.

I liked it enough to buy the lifetime access (with a black friday discount two years ago) and have been very satisfied so far.

The current non-discounted non-subscription/lifetime price of FilmLab is almost twice that of Filmomat SmartConvert, but gives access to all future updates. I don't know if Filmomat does that?
Their statement "Buy once, use forever" is not exactly the same as "all future updates are included".

I certainly will give the Filmomat Smartconvert trial option a go next time I have a batch to work on to see if they have cornered the conversion challenge better than FilmLab.

Steven Lee · Nov 10, 2023

koraks said:
I don't think that mechanism holds up if you start to think it through in terms of what RA4 paper is, how its curves look, what the meaning of 'density' is, etc.
To be honest, I think @runswithsizzers has a valid point in that this isn't going to preserve any 'essence of film' beyond the grain that will have carried over into the scan and maybe a little crossover at the toe & shoulder.

But...it looks pretty neat and although I haven't tried it yet, I do like the simple UI, the relevant controls offered and the apparent ease of use. If it's as good as you say @Steven Lee, I think it's actually progress on this front, and may be well worth the money for those who regularly scan their color negatives.

What I meant by density of RA4 paper was... I should have said light sensitivity of its layers. As each of CMY layers on film receives progressively less light (topmost layers get more, and have higher gamma), this is counterbalanced by reversing the order of emulsion layers on paper. So in theory it shouldn't be that hard to implement digitally. Unfortunately, because all competing products are implemented as Adobe plug-ins, they have to fight Adobe color management, so simple digital boosting of exposure/density of each layer is not enough. Both authors of NLP and Negmaster have written about this on their forums. On top of that, they come with emulsion-specific LUTs and/or custom curves (hello, Silverfast), something this product does not do.

I am waiting for the weekend to spend more time with it, but a dozen or so sample images I have converted, out of the box without any editing, looked incredibly close to my manual conversions with Negmaster neutral color profiles, and far better than the standard NLP output. The only remaining question I still have is its approach to sharpening. The export feature is disabled in the demo version.

runswithsizzers · Nov 10, 2023

koraks said:
No. The seller should be able to offer you an ex-VAT sale if you purchase from outside the EU.
You are probably required by US tax law to pay VAT locally, but I don't know your tax law and I also don't know if anyone is bothering with actually monitoring such purchases. Technically you're importing and that tends to involve the duty to pay taxes, including VAT, but it depends on where you live, what you buy, from where, etc.

As I understand it, the VAT is like a national sales tax, right? There is no VAT in the US. We pay state and local taxes on purchases. Where I live (Missouri), we pay 4.23% state sales tax, plus city and county taxes that bring the total up to 7.60%.

I just got an email reply from Lukas Fritz at Filmomat GmbH, who says:
"The price is the same (99€) independent from your location,"
...so apparently non-EU buyers cannot escape paying the included 19% VAT...

koraks · Nov 10, 2023

Steven Lee said:
As each of CMY layers on film receives progressively less light (topmost layers get more, and have higher gamma), this is counterbalanced by reversing the order of emulsion layers on paper.

No, this is not how it works. I intend to write a blog about this soon, but to cut a long story short, the filtering of color in RA4 paper is a combination of dye sensitization for the magenta- and cyan-forming layers and absolute sensitivity. The layer order of the film has nothing to do with it.

An ideal RA4 paper has perfectly linear and parallel color H/D curves. A real-world RA4 paper has a distinct toe and shoulder, and the three color curves are no longer strictly parallel at least with the advent of 'digital' papers.

Steven Lee · Nov 10, 2023

@koraks Please do! My knowledge of the matter is mostly based on old Photo Engineer posts. I probably won't be able to find it now, but in some old thread he explained that each layer's exposure is offset by -0.5EV relative to each other going top down. Also, the outer layer is exposed to the developer for a little bit longer because the full chemical penetration of the emulsion is not instant, leading to slight gamma differences. To offset these two phenomena, the order of emulsion layers on RA4 is reversed. There's probably more to it, but the point I was trying to make is that there's no fundamental reason for why digitally emulating RA4 paper behavior is impossible. IIRC Adrian Bacon was working on his custom software with a similar goal, stated as "digital RA4 paper".

[EDIT] And now, having through some more about what you'd written above, maybe the digital emulation of RA4 paper can potentially be better than the real thing!

koraks · Nov 10, 2023

Steven Lee said:
each layer's exposure is offset by -0.5EV relative to each other going top down.

Yes.

Steven Lee said:
Also, the outer layer is exposed to the developer for a little bit longer because chemical penetration of the emulsion is not instant, leading to slight gamma differences.

I don't think this is very big effect to be honest, although it'll play a minor role for sure in emulsion technology.

Steven Lee said:
To offset these two phenomena, the order of emulsion layers on RA4 is reversed.

I don't think that's why Kodak reversed the layer order of chromogenic papers back in 1954 (prior to that, it followed the layer order of film). Apparently had to do with unevenness of the baryta base that was still used for color paper back then and mottling resulting from it. By reversing the layer order, this effect was less apparent. In consecutive product generations, they stuck with the present layer order.

The filtering approach used in film etc. doesn't work if you have the cyan/red layer on top and blue/yellow at the bottom. As a solution they came up with the speed differential you mentioned earlier. So it's not that the layer stack was rearranged because of a speed difference etc. It was the other way around. The speed difference is there to limit crossover of the blue and green exposures onto the cyan/red and green/magenta layers.

An additional advantage of the current layer order is that it does away with the two filter layers that are customarily used in color films, reversal materials etc. So it's basically a simpler product. This is probably possible because the working conditions of paper can be more tightly controlled than for film. They can set a fairly narrow process window for paper (in terms of exposure mostly) while for film (and to an extent, RIP Cibachrome), the material just has to deal with whatever Nature throws at it.

Steven Lee · Nov 10, 2023

Looking forward to that blog post!

250swb · Nov 11, 2023

I've been playing around with the Demo version and it's nice software if you haven't already got something similar. I gave it both colour and B&W negatives and while the results came out very accurately I think other methods work just as well, it certainly isn't a revolution but maybe a small increment forward. The difference between Negmaster, ColorPerfect, and Filmomat are minimal at best (I don't use Negative Lab Pro because it can't be used in Photoshop). And more alarmingly for those wanting to throw money at a problem the much derided method of inverting the image in Photoshop and then applying Auto Color and Auto Contrast is now almost as good in matching the images from the three dedicated programmes. Maybe Adobe have been secretly tweaking 'Invert' because in the past it was a truly painful method of inverting a colour negative? But even at 99 Euro I would have been tempted to run it alongside the other conversion methods for a longer test but for the fact that it's unfortunately only available as standalone software

IMoL · Nov 15, 2023

I bit the bullet and have been testing it this week.

I really like the conversions is does on colour negs; by default they come out a bit contrasty - adjustment is very easy using the hot keys and you can "inherit" the adjustment from one neg to the next on the roll. I prefer to get a slightly "flat" conversion and adjust afterwards in Photoshop.

The Auto Crop feature works well with some scans but not with others. I have tended to not crop in smartconvert and do it afterwards in Photoshop where I can control the aspect ratio precisely.

I have been having some issues with black and white conversions. It sometimes blows out highlights (e.g. in cloudy skies) that were not blown out on either the negative or the original scan - you can reduce the contrast so it doesn't clip to pure white but the data does not come back. I have given this feedback to the developer.

One more thing that I think needs improvement: (On a Mac) you can't drag and drop files or "open in" from e.g. Bridge - you have to open SmartConvert first and then load the files from within the software.

There's definite potential there, but I think it needs to mature a bit. Updates seem to be quite frequent.

koraks · Nov 15, 2023

That sounds promising. Thanks for updating, and good of you to provide feedback to the maker as well!

logan2z · Nov 15, 2023

There's a detailed review of the software on YouTube:

Filmomat Smart Convert

Andreas Thaler