Adding Analog/Negative FILM Conversion Features
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What problem do you see this solving?
Analog photography is back and we need comprehensive tools for editing
As analog/negative film becomes (again) part of many photographers workflows and producing repro/macro shots of negative film with digital cameras becomes more prominent, I would really love to see an option for CaptureOne Pro that would allow native conversion of negative film from RAW.
A hidden feature?
This feature is already available, but only for CaptureOne CH (Cultural Heritage) users. There are work arounds, but tools like Negative Lab Pro became very popular for a reason. Unfortunately this plug-in is only available for Adobe Lightroom. As far as I understand, plug-in architecture of CaptureOne does not allow the tight integration a tool like Negative Lab Pro requires. So we are kind of stuck here. I am aware of the fact that you can invert the curves, but this is not a very convenient neither very consistent approach with reproducible results across multiple shoots and film brands. So why not opening the already present CH feature to all of us? It would be an initial step to cover this market. From there on more (current) film brands could be implemented.
When was the last time you were affected by this lack of functionality, or specific tool?
Any time I would take a macro shot of an analog film with my mirrorless I would have to jump through hoops to create a positive, editable image in my C1 library.
Are you using any workarounds or other solutions to achieve your goals in Capture One?
For Mac users a tool called "Analogue Toolbox" by Michael Wilmes is available (see below). His workaround does an excellent job, but unfortunately it is hampered by technical limitations within C1. He is very knowledgeable and helpful, but it is upon the C1 engineers to take the next step.
Are you happy to be contacted further about this suggestion or request?
YES
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There was an interesting thread some years ago.
„Technicalprocessingmethod Capture one“ as web search should find it.0 -
I also wish this was in Capture One and not as a multi thousand dollar Cultural Heritage add on. This one MISSING feature is why I will be jumping on Adobe (even though I don't like them as much) once I get my new copy stand this fall (i.e. so I can use Negative Lab Pro for around 100 bucks).
"Analogue Toolbox for Capture One" : this is only for people who use Apple products. I don't as I don't see the appeal in their pricing for things I can do just as well for half the price, in Windows. But that is another story. "Analogue Toolbox for Capture One" is not an option for Windows users.
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You should take a bite of the Apple, you don’t know what you’re missing ;)
Thanks for the heads-up regarding Analogue Toolbox for C1, which looks useful. There’s a page for Windows users on how to replicate what he’s put into a little automation for Mac (https://www.mwilmes.com/digitization-cn) and he mentions you can be distilled into a custom C1 style. Might be worth a try?
FWIW, having trialled Negative Lab Pro a few times, it’s OK but it’s not a solved problem by any means and doesn’t magically get negative colours looking as they should all the time. Sufficed to say I’ve haven’t parted with money yet.
I hear Silverfast is pretty good in this regard, if you have a decent scanner.
I’ve not yet found a way to do this satisfactorily. A good dedicated scanning service by someone who knows their art and science is still worth their weight in gold, but they’re very few and far between - a sad state of affairs when I think every tiny mini-Lab in the world used to get this aspect right day-in, day-out…
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performing a search for „Why are negative inversion tools restricted to CH?“ in C1 forums/community will give some information.
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Cultural Heritage or not, when opening a mono image in C1 you have a big problem… C1 does not support greyscale. I have a Nikon 9000 scanner which scans a frame of 6x6 at 165mb as greyscale. When converted to RGB to open in C1, it changes to 450mb. This is a huge waste of drive space and slows everything down enormously. So even if you have CH, it may be more of a headache than it's worth.
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I guess there had never been a B/W Phase One Back, and museums and alike certainly won't preserve cultural pieces in B/W / greyscale either. Probably even B/W photographs from the old times have some tint to it which seems worthwhile preserving.
So this might explain the lack of greyscale support, there are probably not enough "nerds" using B/W film in the C1 customer base.
The cultural heritage styles shipped with C1 seem to be based on a Phase One film curve (you can open them in any editor and see that), so not exactly tailored to the cameras or scanners we typcially would use.
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There are several B/W Phase One backs (IQ3 / IQ4) called Achromatic, but this is not the point.
Capture one is a tool to work on RAW, meaning cameras files, not scanners to my point of view.
The cultural heritage styles are quite effective but they are not intuitive to use like that, and need some tweaking to work properly. I'm definitively looking and hoping for a better embedded tool in C1.0 -
You're right.
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I'm supporting this feature request too.
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Maybe a reason to upgrade my perpetual license...
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I won't renew a perpetual license if a decent negative film conversion feature or plugin is not available for a reasonable price (i.e. similar price to the Negative Lab Pro solution available for the competitor's products). And I won't use a subscription service, at all. :)
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At least ON1 seems to be taking seriously the idea of working with scans and black and white:
"ON1 Photo RAW 2023.5 makes restoring vintage film scans incredibly good fun and easy! Check out this video as we delve into the art of breathing new life into vintage photographs."
While ON1 appears to be adding new features every 6 months or so, C1 appears to be dead in the water apart from adding revenue raising things like an iPhone or iPad version which is useless to many or most of us.
Given that C1 already has the features to deal with mono and restoration, wouldn't it make sense that in the absence of new features, they put this existing ones into mainstream versions of C1? I have not updated in some time because there's nothing it need but this would make me shell out a few more dollars.
My HDD is currently clogged up with hundreds of mono scans which have been tripled in size by converting to RBG to import into C1. If the developers were really interested in the needs of users, surely problems like this would have been sorted out by now?
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mountainview, if you're still with us, can you please do a formatting of the request according to the template described here:?
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Thanks to people for pointing out Grain2Pixel and On1. I'm currently looking for solutions to my negative scanning issue and since I'm still using Photoshop/LR, I'm looking to replace that. Adobe is overly bloating their apps. Since C1 isn't really working for me with neg scans I've let my license languish. I'll have to give On1 a go.
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I would also like to emphatically request the Film Conversion tool to be available for Capture One Pro users.
I'm currently an AIO subscriber and I would be more than willing to pay even more to get this feature that has been in the CH version for a long time.Please bring this to Capture One Pro. The analog community is growing exponentially over the years. This tool being brought over from the CH version will make C1 the go-to choice for film scanning/conversion.
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Let’s see if this works: YOU’RE LEAVING MONEY ON THE TABLE”. You know, lovely money, the only thing CaptureOne seems to be about these days…. Take the bits that you can use from C1CH and package them as a paid for add-on to C1Pro. Hey, even squeeze the lemon some more by making it available to subcribers only.
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No, not for subscribers only.
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Subcribers only? Then they wouldn't get my money.
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Do you get the feeling that the C1 fora and this question in particular is a case of "talk to the hand because the face ain't listening"?
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I added another topic to see if there's anyone listening :Is anybody out there? Nobody from C1 seems to respond to most of our requests.
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Yes John Clark, it's why I and others aren't paying them any more money. Voting with my wallet.
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Another reason for voting with my wallet is they introduce more bugs which I am affected by (and have reported, partially solved, but in a version I have no license for) than they add new features which could be useful to me.
Pair this tendency for regression defects with the massively shortened bug fix period if you are a perpetual license owner and this is a no-go.
If one wants to update one must be testing very very thoroughly all aspects of functionality one is using to be sure to get a minor version which works as previously without new bugs.
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If their software rocked everything else out of the water, or their management's attitude was really client-centric, or both, this software could sky-rocket. Unfortunately, neither of the two seems to be the case.
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How has it been 3 years and still nothing changed? Really unfortunate!
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Simply because of this:
"Inverting negative or positive film is a specific feature available in the Capture One Cultural Heritage product variant. This option is not present in Capture One Pro/Fujifilm/(for Sony)/ Express."
Quote you will find here:
https://support.captureone.com/hc/en-us/articles/360002651377
There is a hack/trick though for Capture One to scan negatives, but that's need some extensive research in the forum posts...
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Leo, that version is not available to download (at least in my search and clicks) and according to a Capture One rep I spoke with years ago won’t be coming back, hence why this is still necessary in our current version.
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Leo, when that was available, it was a $5K version. Capture One is obviously not interested in providing this functionality even though it would make it an industry leader in that, and likely create lots of new sales. They just aren't that bright when it comes to making their product desirable.
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It is still available and it is still that price. And it is one of the few avantage (+ auto crop) to have the heritage version, that is in regard of this, as you say, well sell.
To my understanding (and I spent time on it), it's absolutely the same software, but with some limitations on the standard version. It would be absolutely easy to C1 to sell add-on to the standard version, but make a simple calculation and you will understand easily it's a marketing decision, not a software limitation. This said, the actual version of C1 make easily negative conversion, they even recently improve it.
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This said, the actual version of C1 make easily negative conversion, they even recently improve it.
Hi Leo FABRIZIO, what exactly do you mean by that?
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all my black and white photos are film. i would like to see ability to edit not a preset to make it look like film. it already is film. i curently use dxo for all my film edits. it would be nice to not jump from program to program.
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