DxO FilmPack 8 - Bridging the Film World with the Digital World
DxO FilmPack 8
What is FilmPack 8 you may ask ? ... FilmPack 8 is a feature packed film emulation application with over 300 scientifically created presets, which are completely editable, from original film stocks that include analog response curves, grain structures and tonal behavior making these profiles & presets some of the best on the market today.
If you have never shot film, all of these film looks will be new to you, however, if you started your photographic journey shooting film, you should recognize some of these preset names right away. You may event notice a few that you completely forgot existed back in your film days.
Everyone’s reasons for using any of these presets can vary from trying to recreate a look and feel you used before digital to attempting to create a unique style for your photographs. It’s all possible with what DxO has accomplished with their FilmPack application.
Not only can you choose from one of their over 300 presets, you can edit/modify them to your liking in the Customize Tab. So, you begin by selecting one of the presets and then you move on over to the Customize tab and start making some changes. These changes can be anything from lightness and darkness, contrast, saturation and vibrance to Graphical effects including frames, texture or light leaks. There are also a few Len effects such as Filters, Creative vignetting and Blur.
There is even a Film Scan Optimizer option for those who have scanned in some film. Since I do not have any scanned negative hanging around, I can’t make use of this feature. There are two options in this section; Invert image and Color shift neutralizer. The Invert image option is for working with any negatives and the color shift neutralizer is, well, going to help neutralizing and possible colour shifts that may have occurred during the scanning process.
My interest lies in Black & White Photography. I first started developing my black & white films and making prints in my darkroom back in 1970. In the 1980’s I started shooting colour film when shooting professionally when I was working in the portrait and wedding industry. After that I was a photojournalist for Metroland Media (not sure what they are called now) and everything was shot in black & white. Any indoor sporting events required fast shutter speeds and high ISO settings. Depending on the film stock on hand, we may have been required to boost the ISO and then “push-process” the films. This usually resulted in a significant amount of visible grain. The normal film we used was Kodak Tri-X 400. When you push the ISO up to say 800 or 1600, there would be visible grain so I made it my personal quest to find a high speed film and developer combination that resulted is the finest grain possible.
In this article I am going to choose some black & white presets for some hockey shots I took back in 2013. The arena was lit okay but not as well as they are today so the ISO was set at 6,400 for this particular OHL game. The idea is to create a black & white image from the original colour image with minimal grain. Although I do like grain in my black & white images I want to see if I can re-create a look and feel from decades ago.
Before we go any further I want to mention that there are a few different ways to use FilmPack 8; as a Stand-Alone Application as seen above, from within Adobe Lightroom Classic and from within Adobe Photoshop which now has a dedicated FilmPack 8 Panel and of course from within DxO PhotoLab. You can also access FilmPack 8 from within Adobe Bridge by right-clicking on your preview thumbnail and at the operating system level using either the Finder window on a Mac or Explorer on Windows.
Let’s get to it!
The FilmPack 8 Interface - Stand Alone Application
Once FilmPack 8 has launched you’ll be presented with the DxO FilmPack 8 interface which has your typical folder navigation on the left hand side and what I will call a typical thumbnail browser on the right. Simply double-click on any image and off you go.
Now that we have chosen an image to work on you can see that our interface has changed to where we can start choosing a film simulation to see how it will look.
On the left side we see our image which initially opens up in the “Fit to Screen” zoom size which is great when we first start to get an overview of what a given film simulation will look like over the entire image but if you want to zoom in to 1:1 aspect ratio just click on that icon above the image.
If you decide that you want to choose a different image for whatever reason simply click on he Browse Grid View icon across the top above the orange Presets button.
Double-Click on your next choice and …
On the right hand side are your preloaded DxO FilmPack 8 Presets. And there a lots to choose from. Some may say too many to choose from. Once you have gone through all of these presets a few times, you will quickly notice that you would prefer some over others. I suggest making note of the ones you are interested in after trying them out.
As mentioned earlier, I am wanting to create a black & white version of this image taking on the characteristics of film I used to shoot with back in the film days but first I want to see what this fine grain Fujifilm Neopan Acros 100 looks like if for no other reason than there is absolutely no way I could have ever captured this image with this film loaded in my camera for a variety of reasons … most importantly because this particular film did not exist until the year 2001.
I like it - this is something to take note of.
Next, I have selected Fujifilm’s Neopan 1600 which I did shoot with in these dimly lit hockey arenas. I have also zoomed into the 1:1 ratio in order to better see the effects of the film grain.
Next we have Kodak’s T-Max super fine grain films. This was offered in ISO’s of 100, 400 & 3200.
This is Kodak T-Max 100. This black & white film would have been used for shooting situations similar to shooting today using digital cameras at their base ISO.
Next we have Kodak T-Max 400. Basically the same film characteristics as T-Max 100 just more sensitive to light allowing the shooter to shot at higher shutter speeds or smaller f-stops or both.
And now we have the one that I used to shoot indoor sporting events, Kodak T-Max 3200. Check out the grain with this film. Some may not like it while others will. Compare this to push processing either Fujifilm’s Neopan 1600 to 3200 or even Kodak’s Tri-X 400 to 3200 and you will choose Kodak T-Max 3200 everyday all day long.
And now, because I liked Kodak T-Max 400 so much I have decided to use this film preset for this image. I have also cropped it as you can see.
I do like this film choice but the blacks seem to be just a bit too strong and I would like to lighten them up somewhat. To do this we need to go into the Customize tab. At the very top of the Customize tab is the Film Scan Optimizer discussed earlier that we will not be talking about in this article.
I have zoomed in on this cropped image to get an even better look at everything that is going on. In this Customize tab we have quite a few options to choose from. I currently have my cursor hovering over the Film Rendering (also known as Presets) section where we can choose a different film stock and it’s intensity.
Beneath that are the Grain options. You can leave it at the film rendering that matches your preset or you can choose one of the many others available. The other option is to choose the camera format grain. Meaning you can choose from the equivalent of 35mm film - 24mm x 36mm, medium format - 6cm x 6cm or large format - 4x5 inch sheet film.
Next we have the Split Toning option where we can choose one colour for the highlights and a different colour for the shadows.
After this we have the Development Panel where we have a lot of ways to adjust our film rendering choices. In order they are as follows; Light which allows us to affect the tones in the image by way of Exposure, Highlights, Midtones, Shadows & Blacks.
Next we have Luminosity Masks which allows us to select different lights & darks based on the Zone System scale.
How this works is you click on the plus sign to create a new luminosity mask. By default, the black to white gradient below the zone scale shows you are at what is known as middle grey or zone 5.
Next, select the Eyedropper Tool and click once in the area you want to affect a change in. Since I want to lighten up the extreme black areas I clicked on the dark area on the goalie’s jersey. This moved the tone selector down to the zone 1-2 areas - highlighted in orange. The sliders on the top of this gradient affect the zones and the sliders below affect the spread or feathering.
Along the bottom left, you will notice a “Brush Settings” overlay which if you choose to paint in the mask as opposed to how I created the mask with the Eyedropper Tool you can change the Size, Feathering and Opacity.
At the very bottom, you should notice the “Mask Settings” which include; the Brush icon, the Eraser icon (if you choose to brush in your mask), Show Brush Settings, Show Mask, Mask Opacity and Mask Color which usually defaults to Red. And finally a Reset and Apply button.
Side Note: If you have used masks in other image editing applications, you should have noticed that the default colour for masks in those other applications was Red as well.
It’s a prepress thing called a Red Rubylith Mask. The term "Red rubilith mask" refers to a Rubylith film, a red, light-safe masking film used in the 1960s and 1970s to create photolithographic masks for early integrated circuits and printed circuit boards. We also used yellow masks when I worked in the photography department at The Canadian Marconi Company in Montreal in the early-mid 1970’s.
Another common use was in the prepress departments where this red, light sensitive mask was cut out to show/hide certain areas in the preparation of films for the printing presses.
Ok, let’s continue …
You can see that I adjusted the upper sliders and the lower sliders to the areas where I wanted to affect change. I then scrolled down to the Light section of the Development Panel and chose to lighten the Shadows.
There is a Contrast Section
There is a White Balance Section
There is a Channel Mixer Section and here I wanted to lighten up the yellow/gold in the Kingston player’s jerseys so I created another mask and using the Eyedropper Tool I made a selection, modified the spread or feather of that selected area and then in this Channel Mixer section I lightened the Yellows slightly.
There is a Tone Curvet Section
There is a Automated Corrections Section which looks like it deals with Noise Removal and Optical Corrections. I do not used these as I do my all of this before using FilmPack.
Don’t forget, Noise Removal is different from Film Grain - just something to keep in mind.
Next we have Graphical Effects where we can add for example, frames to our images.
Next we have a Texture feature if you wanted to add paper grain, scratches or water droplets.
Next we have something called Light Leaks. Some like it - some don’t …
Then we have Lens Effects where we can add colour filters to our image. Not particularly useful in my example of choosing Kodak’s T-Max 400 black & white film rendering but may be of use in colour images.
After that we have Creative Vignetting. We can affect the Intensity and change the Midpoint, Transition, Roundness and set the Centre point.
And lastly, we have the Blur section where we can affect the Vignetting and the Soft Focus of the blur. After clicking either of these choices, the Intensity slider is set to zero but after you move that slider, other options and choices appear. Under the Vignette option you have Radius, Transition, Roundness, Diffusion and Set Center. Under Soft Focus you have Diffusion.
Again, nothing I would use here but in other images, quite maybe.
Now, getting back to the edits I have made to this image which was to use the Kodak T-Max 400 film rendering. Then using one Luminosity Mask I lightened the Shadows in the players hockey pants and using a second Luminosity Mask I lightened up the yellow/gold in the Kingston player’s jerseys.
Since I have a handful of images from this game that I like very much and want to either make some prints, upload to my web site or just post to social media, I am going to create a preset of my own - a Custom Preset and then apply that preset to all of the rest.
Let’s see how this is accomplished …
Creating a Custom Preset in FilmPack 8
Just to the right of the Save button in the upper left corner is the “Save settings as preset” button. Click on that and fill in the areas such as Preset Name, Creator and Description. You can also click on the tiny star to set it as one of your favourites as I did here.
Here you can see that I named my FilmPack 8 Custom Preset as follows:
01-Digital-Kodak-T-Max 400 Custom Preset
This Preset is a modified version of DxO's Kodak T-Max 400 film simulation.
This Preset is for an OHL game between the Mississauga Steelheads and the Kingston Frontenacs. These modifications were made to adjust the Kingston Frontenac's uniforms which are very similar to the Boston Bruins' colour combinations.
Although the original exposure was good I found after selecting this black & white rendition that the blacks were too dark so using the Luminosity Mask feature in the Development section, using the eyedropper tool, I selected the black portion of the goalie's jersey and modified the zone(s) to include approximately half of zone 0 and half of zone I. The upper values (zones) on the gradient scale were set to 15 and 40 while the lower values ( the feathering) were set to 0 and 54.
Using the Light panel, I raised the Shadows to 30.
Using the Chanel Mixer panel I raised the Yellows to brighten the yellow/gold of the players jersey.
Comments
Post a Comment