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Digital photos that look like Portra.


tim_c

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I recently started using Portra 160 NC in my M6 and am extremely impressed with the colours- some of the shots I have taken look like an extremely well graded motion picture but without the need of an expensive telecine suite :D Does anyone know of any Kodak Porta NC like lightroom color profiles available on the web? I'd love to be able to get colours like this with my M8.

 

Here's a photo I took whilst shooting my first roll of 160 NC. It came straight off the scanner like this without any post adjustment. Please forget the image content, it's just a test shot.

 

4975548850_df710a3174_b.jpg

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Totally wrong. This Magnum photographer shoots 400NC, scans the negatives and gets digital C-type prints made. I think he's probably a better photographer than you or I.

 

Photography by Alec Soth

 

Just bought his new book (broken manual) yesterday, so I know his pictures very well.

I don't know how he processes his images (though I could imagine it's a bit easier to get the colors right with the huge 8x10" negatives he uses exclusively), but wet prints would still look different - not necessarely better but different.

also spoke to my lab about this a few weeks ago and they said to get the creamy portra colors they scan the prints and not the negatives.

 

to your question:

there is this plugin by Nik Software that tries to emulate different film types.

you might want to give this a shot.

I for myself am 100% back to Film as I always had problems to get these typical Film-colors and never saw digital pictures that got this look (except for the Fuji S5 which uses a three-layered sensor).

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there is this plugin by Nik Software that tries to emulate different film types.

 

Its called "NIK Color Efex Pro". I believe its currently the best emulation software available. I use it, and am satisfied. However, when I look at other postings shot with real film, the difference is still quite noticeable. There's a certain "feeling" that is simply not there. Of course, this could also be due to the photographers' skill. :p

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Color Efex Pro is very interesting and often useful, but you need to feed fairly flat or not over-saturated colors into it, as otherwise it quickly goes over the top. Also, you may need to adjust the contrast curves or color sensitivity of some of the presets. For example, the Kodachrome 64 preset often needs a lowering of the brightness of the mid-tones (simple adjustment of the preset curve) and to modulate the extreme look of the yellows and reds, you can put down a "negative Control Point" with the Opacity set to zero, or move the latter slider up from zero until you get the look you want for these two colors.

 

The modules that I use most often are Film Effects (these are the film presets), Darker/Lighter Center and Bleach Bypass — the latter can produce very good colors and whites when applied very moderately, almost minimally. Exploration is required.

 

I run Color Efex 3 under Aperture 3 and also usually use Viveza 2 to increase Structure, which increases mid-tone contrast in a somewhat different way from Aperture's "Definition" slider.

 

—Mitch/Bangkok

Shophouse Demolition

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You could always create your own presets in lightroom and apply it to your images. A bit of tweaking here and there shouldn't be a problem .....
That is relatively easy to do when one know's when one knows what one wants the picture to look like. But, often, for any particular image we may not be sure where we want to end up: that is the value of software like Color Efex: we can try alternatives that are very different from seeing the results of tweaking in Lightroom or Photoshop Aperture.

 

—Mitch/Bangkok

Early Morning Market at Pak Nam Pran

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I also love the Portra 400NC look. I am pretty happy with the results Nik Color Efex Pro gives when emulating that film. Here is one example from yesterday. The first picture is Aperture 3 RAW conversion from my X1, no filters applied. For the second one, I applied the Portra 400NC filter with Color Efex Pro. I like the Portra version better.

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Just bought his new book (broken manual) yesterday, so I know his pictures very well.

I don't know how he processes his images (though I could imagine it's a bit easier to get the colors right with the huge 8x10" negatives he uses exclusively), but wet prints would still look different - not necessarely better but different.

also spoke to my lab about this a few weeks ago and they said to get the creamy portra colors they scan the prints and not the negatives.

 

to your question:

there is this plugin by Nik Software that tries to emulate different film types.

you might want to give this a shot.

I for myself am 100% back to Film as I always had problems to get these typical Film-colors and never saw digital pictures that got this look (except for the Fuji S5 which uses a three-layered sensor).

 

I read in an interview with Alec Soth where he said he took his 8x10 negs and had them drum scanned then digital c-type made His colours look pretty awsome to me.

 

People seem to forget or are unaware of the fact that a lot of feature films are still shot using film which is then digitally scanned in a telecine machine. Coloring (grading) is then done on a computer so it's both an analog and digital process. Most well directed movies have a strong colour pallete scene to scene- it's an important part of the storytelling. So it is possible to get creamy off-whites and smooth transitions from shadow to dark in the digital process, I'd imagine most stills photog pro lab techs don't have the time or maybe the skills to get Portra's pallete so scanning a print is a good workaround.

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For what it's worth, here are the default settings for Portra 160NC in Nik Color Efex Pro. I'm not sure how "sensitivity" translates into LR parameters.

 

But this Nik preset creates a pretty gaudy look, in my view. None of the subtlety of the examples posted above.

 

John

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What I do is make a good B&W conversion on a layer. I then play with the fill and opacity sliders until I have exactly the color effect I like. Flatten, adjust saturation and add grain if desired (I usually don't add grain, as I don't want to imitate film, just go for a certain color look.) Disclaimer - I was not going specifically for Porta in these shots, but I am sure one can get really close to the color rendering this way

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  • 2 weeks later...

If you have an M9 try: RAW file ---> Adobe Camera Raw with the following settings: -15% saturation in camera calibration for RGB, increase clarity to 50%. Convert in PS and apply some Shadow/Highlight ---> sharpen ----> print.

Works for me, very simple.

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