Post-Processing Vision 3 in RawTherapee

Cerebum · Wednesday at 8:41 AM

I wasn't sure quite where to put this. If it's in the wrong forum I apologise

I am looking for scan processing tips from kindred spirits who use RawTherapee or Gimp. I shoot Vision 3 500T in a variety of cameras, but sadly I don't have an 85b filter for any. Once the roll is done I use bicarbonate of soda to remove the remjet (2 tbsp dissolved at 38°c, first rinse 2 mins of combined gentle twirling and stand soaking, tip out and replace, second rinse, vigorous shaking, remembering to burp the tank, third rinse as per the first, then two rinses with clean water. Probably OTT, but it works well ). I then develop it in Bellini C41, because it's really good and it's all I have. I then scan the negatives using my DSLR. The scans are then processed in RawTherapee (I also have Gimp). I find these free programs are really good for film, but I can't nail down a consistent method. Does anyone have a magic formula for consistent processing?

koraks · Wednesday at 8:51 AM

Here's how I do it mostly:

Flipped – doing color negative inversions manually – Koraks tinkers

tinker.koraks.nl

Flipping the movie – Color negative inversion process video – Koraks tinkers

tinker.koraks.nl

This is in GIMP; the same thing could be done in RawTherapee, or indeed any other tool that allows the application of a custom curve.

In terms of consistency, this is a bit of a tricky subject. Most of the consistency issues I see are often related to the use of auto-adjustments during scanning, which sets you out with a moving target. Since you do your digitizations with a camera, you have in principle the ability to remove such 'black box behavior'. Capture in RAW with a fixed exposure and a fixed white balance. You'll then find that the same adjustment/inversion curve applied to all images of the same roll of film will generally give a decent color balance. Fine tuning can be used to adjust for differences in lighting, time of day etc.

Cerebum · Wednesday at 9:09 AM

koraks said:
Here's how I do it mostly:

Flipped – doing color negative inversions manually – Koraks tinkers

tinker.koraks.nl

Flipping the movie – Color negative inversion process video – Koraks tinkers

tinker.koraks.nl

This is in GIMP; the same thing could be done in RawTherapee, or indeed any other tool that allows the application of a custom curve.

In terms of consistency, this is a bit of a tricky subject. Most of the consistency issues I see are often related to the use of auto-adjustments during scanning, which sets you out with a moving target. Since you do your digitizations with a camera, you have in principle the ability to remove such 'black box behavior'. Capture in RAW with a fixed exposure and a fixed white balance. You'll then find that the same adjustment/inversion curve applied to all images of the same roll of film will generally give a decent color balance. Fine tuning can be used to adjust for differences in lighting, time of day etc.

Utterly brilliant. Thank you. I will have a deep dive on these. RawTherapee is particularly good for film as it comes with film inversion profiles and film curves presets built in. They work great, most of the time, but I wanted a more raw inversion so I saved my own preset. The reason why I use that rather than Gimp (apart from the fact that it is good is that my camera scans are RAWS. Vision 3 is brilliant if you don't mind the added faff. I managed to snaffle 300ft for £50 so have plenty to play with

koraks · Wednesday at 9:25 AM

Vision3 scans fine and also coincidentally prints very nicely in the wet darkroom. So yes, I also think it's brilliant!
Have fun with the curves; it's possible to work magic with them.

Cerebum · Wednesday at 3:46 PM

koraks said:
Vision3 scans fine and also coincidentally prints very nicely in the wet darkroom. So yes, I also think it's brilliant!
Have fun with the curves; it's possible to work magic with them.

I am half way through your YouTube video. It is excellent. I use to use lightroom but the price hike forced me into the arms of Gimp and RawTherapee. Tbh I don't miss lightroom at all, well, I don't now lol. One thing your video did was remind me of something I use to use in lightroom (black and white points in curves) but haven't done recently, and I have no idea why I stopped. You have inspired me to revisit my scans. Thank you so much.

And that is after only half of your video

koraks · Wednesday at 4:19 PM

You know, that's really great to hear; I'm super happy that you've picked up something from my video - regardless of what it is!

Cerebum · Wednesday at 4:56 PM

koraks said:
You know, that's really great to hear; I'm super happy that you've picked up something from my video - regardless of what it is!

Oh, I think there is more to come, I will be continuing it shortly. Thank you for making this.

koraks · Wednesday at 4:59 PM

You're most welcome!

Cerebum · 2025-08-22T15:46:14-0400

koraks said:
You're most welcome!

I finally finished the video. Soooo helpful. My vision 3 images weren't perfect when I inverted the curves and this has often been the case. I have a degree of inconsistency from roll to roll. Sometimes I find a great method, but then it looks awful on the next roll. What I am going to try is to get a decent image, save it, then re-open it and work on the tiff rather than working on an inverted negative. It may take a bit longer, but if it works I will finally have a consistent method

MattKing · 2025-08-22T16:23:28-0400

Thread title tweaked, because I'm still in the head space where "processing" film is a wet procedure!

Cerebum · 2025-08-22T16:52:15-0400

MattKing said:
Thread title tweaked, because I'm still in the head space where "processing" film is a wet procedure!

Haha, yeah, that is true (although, my latest epiphany would be post-post-processing

)

loccdor · 2025-08-22T18:25:46-0400

What I found with DSLR digitization of color negative film is that it's more critical than other film types to ensure stray light is not bouncing around - because you end up increasing the contrast of the processed image so much more and also because the stray light will also likely be a different color than the light coming through the film base.

On some shots you might find the R, G, B channels get too close to the edges of the histogram... risking distorting the information. CS-Lite has a cooler temperature setting to help counteract the film base but it only does so much.

It's more finicky to work with E-6 in camera, but easier to work with it in the digitization.

Cerebum · 2025-08-22T18:31:37-0400

Ok, ironically, the best results with this roll were from the bundled film profile in RawTherapee. It did a great job

Post-Processing Vision 3 in RawTherapee

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Flipped – doing color negative inversions manually – Koraks tinkers

Flipping the movie – Color negative inversion process video – Koraks tinkers

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Flipping the movie – Color negative inversion process video – Koraks tinkers

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