PhotoLine or ColorPerfect plugin for adjusting

[pkr1979]

Hi all,

I'm new to PhotoLine and I use it mainly for dealing with scanned negatives... and positives(both colors and black and white). My workflow so far is opening the negative in PhotoLine, then converting it in ColorPerfect with the appropriate film profile, and then applying Auto Color (simply because I am lazy and cant figure out the controls). I am quite happy with the result though, but it is a bit too green so I will need to do some sort of adjusting myself... so heres my question... how much do you guys do in ColorPerfect before doing the rest in PhotoLine?

What I do when I work digitally (Capture One mainly but also some Affinity) is setting the white balance (Kelvin and Tint), I adjust exposure, contrast, brightness and saturation, and then adjusting highlights and shadows, and usually tweak the histogram (clipping both ends and adjusting the gamma and/or the blackpoint. I sometimes do minor selective color work. I do a lot of dust removal, and I might do some sharpening and clarity. And of course some cropping, alligning and flipping (for negatives scanned the wrong way)... and I might also throw in a gradient mask if I am the right mood... (Im not really that used to working in layers). Anyway, thats usually what I do to finish i photo and I figured I'd use the same steps in PhotoLine with ColorPerfect so if anyone is keen to share how they do their workflow and use these applications I am eager to listen

Cheers
Peter

[Robert]

I'm a frequent user of the ColorPerfect Plugin with PhotoLIne and have used the combination for several years now. The combination is very good and can deliver stunning results. However, it takes quite a lot of time to develop a workflow which gives you consistent results.

My workflow is as follows (in my case with a Nikon Coolscan scanner and VueScan software):

Stap 1:
Make a preview scan of an unexposed part of the film (the lighthest part of a negative).
After the preview scan lock the exposure.

Stap 2:
Repeat the preview scan and the scan lock the image color.

Stap 3:
Save the ViewScan options in a *.ini file.

Stap 4:
You now have locked the exposure and the color for your entire film. Start scanning all your images on this specific ilm roll without altering any settings in ViewScan. Please check that your output file is a linear scan (Tick "Raw file" and "Raw output with save", "Raw file type "16-bit gray" for black and white negatives and "48-bit color "for color negatives).

Stap 5:
You now have a collection of linear scans. Quite a long time I had problems to get natural looking red color in the images after having invoked the ColorPerfect plugin from within PhotoLine. After a lot of experiments I noticed that I had to assign a Nikon Color Profile to the images before using ColorPerfect. For color negatives I use the LS9000_N v4.0.0.3000 profile supplied by Nikon. The first part of the profile name reflects the scanner you use. Just select the right profiles. For slides I use the LS9000_P v4.0.0.3000 profile. You can find more info on this topic at
https://smashandgrabphoto.wordpress.com ... -profiles/

Assign the color profile with Tool -> Color -> Set color profile

Stap 6:
Start the ColorPerfect Plugin. The plugin is very powerful. Unfortunately the use of the plugin is not trivial. The GUI of the plugin is strange at at first sight counter intuitive. The same holds for the documentation.
Fortunately the website www.colorperfect.com gives a lot of helpful information.
I do nearly all of the corrections in ColorPerfect. For many films I cannot use the supplied film characteristics. Instead I make my own *.negpos file with the filmtype film charaterization tool in the ColorPerfect plugin.
For more information look at http://www.colorperfect.com/color_casts.html?lang=en

The better you perform step 6 the best will be the output quality and the less time you will need for subsequent steps in PhotoLine.

Stap 7:
after having used the ColorPerfect plugin I have a non-linear Tiff-file which shouls be near perfect. Convert the color profile of this image to your destination profile (in my case Adobe98). I then use PhotolIne to eliminate dust and scatches and to modify (just slightly) the curve.

I hope this helps you a little bit.

Good luck,

Robert




Stap 7:
When you


Stap 6:

[pkr1979]

Robert! Thanks for this

[tom.in.okinawa]

This helped me alot! Thank you!