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VSCO and M10


emilspix

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How do these differ from VSCOs own presets for the M10? I have all but stopped using them for color work to be honest because they look terrible which is really disappointing. It played much nicer with the M240 DNGs.

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Guest Nowhereman

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Not all presets are equal, and not all run on ON-1 and Affinity. I've tried several on my computer and a couple on other people's machines. VSCO is not the best. RNI is generally better. Some people swear by the Mastin presets.

My feeling is that the C1ick Match profiles work the best. These are not presets at all: they are profiles for a variety of Kodak and Fujifilm films, and for pushing and exposure alternatives. Being profiles, from my brief experience trying them, my feeling is that they provide the best color looks as well as more scope for easy adjustment than presets do. C1ick Match profiles are available only for Lightroom and for Capture One.

There is a C1ick Match FaceBook group made up largely of wedding photographers, many of whom shoot film and are interested in providing brides with early digital proofs — so they are interested in the ability of the C1ick Match profiles to provide the best match for their color film work. Anyone interested can look at that FB group. I haven't bought the Click Match profiles, at least not yet, because I've been doing mainly B&W in getting my book ready and published.
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23 hours ago, Nowhereman said:

My feeling is that the C1ick Match profiles work the best. These are not presets at all: they are profiles for a variety of Kodak and Fujifilm films, and for pushing and exposure alternatives. Being profiles, from my brief experience trying them, my feeling is that they provide the best color looks as well as more scope for easy adjustment than presets do. C1ick Match profiles are available only for Lightroom and for Capture One.

Thanks for the tip! I prefer profiles instead of presets too, and I have tried several. These look very promising, so I'll take a look at them.

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On 11/15/2019 at 10:49 AM, Nowhereman said:

Not all presets are equal, and not all run on ON-1 and Affinity. I've tried several on my computer and a couple on other people's machines. VSCO is not the best. RNI is generally better. Some people swear by the Mastin presets.

My feeling is that the C1ick Match profiles work the best. These are not presets at all: they are profiles for a variety of Kodak and Fujifilm films, and for pushing and exposure alternatives. Being profiles, from my brief experience trying them, my feeling is that they provide the best color looks as well as more scope for easy adjustment than presets do. C1ick Match profiles are available only for Lightroom and for Capture One.

There is a C1ick Match FaceBook group made up largely of wedding photographers, many of whom shoot film and are interested in providing brides with early digital proofs — so they are interested in the ability of the C1ick Match profiles to provide the best match for their color film work. Anyone interested can look at that FB group. I haven't bought the Click Match profiles, at least not yet, because I've been doing mainly B&W in getting my book ready and published.
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Fuji provide their film type profiles in Lightroom for their cameras. Leica should be doing the same, perhaps including Kodak profiles. You get some Adobe profiles at present in Lightroom, but it would be nice to have everything there in Lightroom without the need to go for outside assistance. I hope that the software group acquired by Leica is looking at this as well as the computational stuff. As I am an amateur I never use presets as I prefer to process each image individually.

Of, course, the best way to get film 'profiles' is to shoot film, which I still do.

William

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What I've been looking for, but still not found, is profiles with different matte looks, but with natural colors. Not necessarily imitating film. I am often inspired by big H&M posters etc. I try to make my own presets using tone curves in LR, but I'm never fully satisfied with the results.

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Hi everyone! This is my first post here. I was a long-term Hasselblad and Canon shooter but recently added an M10 to my bag, mainly for my personal projects and a pure joy of using it.

Historically I've been using VSCO. But later I worked for a company where we did a lot of contemporary architecture and interior shootings and their studio was using RNI for the post. So eventually I switched to RNI too because it had some really good camera profiles for my MF gear and also the RNI's rendering was generally more refined. 

Over the years, I tried many other color-grading and film-simulating packages from smaller vendors including Mаstin and DVLОР, and even the Adobe's and Phase One's own presets and styles, but none could come close to what VSCO and RNI could offer in terms of consistency and general feeling of "getting it right".

Now VSCO has sadly ceased their desktop business, while RNI seems to be thriving and releasing new products. So its lineup probably looks the most refined and mature. But in my opinion RNI doesn't do enough to explain the key difference between their own products on their own website, so you must be an expert in the Adobe software or just spend fortune and figure it out yourself through the experience.

From my experience: RNI has "All Films 4" and "All Films 5" product lines. But they are not like different iterations of the same idea, like, say, M9 and M10 where one is supposed to be more advanced than another. Those numbers RNI decided to assign to them look quite confusing to me. In fact they are just very different ways and different experiences leading to similar results, more like M10 and SL.

The All Films 4 is using RNI's own camera profiles and then applies film simulation on top by setting up Lightroom curves, sliders and camera calibration adjustments. All happens in one click: the preset selects the right profile for your camera automatically, and there is no need for different presets for Canon, Leica, Sony etc. Personally I often use the "RNI Prime" profile alone, even without any film look on top, just as a starting point for my own edits. It is much better than the Adobe's. It creates a very flat picture with wealth of detail in shadows and highlights and a very pleasing, neutral and natural colours. So you can do whatever you want on top of it.

The All Films 5 is fundamentally different from 4: it contains presets too, but those presets only apply "film profiles" and do not touch any LR sliders. Those "film profiles" are also slightly unusual. They are not camera profiles, they are more like LUTs. They have an "Amount" slider on them so you can adjust the strength of the look. But, unlike LUTs, they have some attributes of camera profiles and often reveal hidden details from highlights when applied to RAW. So technically it's probably a kind of a sandwich of a custom camera profile with an adjustable LUT on top. Once the preset is applied and the profile strength is adjusted to your liking, you can add your own edits by using Lightroom sliders and curves as you normally do. But it feels like any edits you make live in the color space dictated by the film profile. For example, you can't make your black point darker than the black point of the film profile. One one hand this is limiting, on the other - the original color harmony created by the profile is always preserved, so you either accept it or select a different film stock. In some way it feels like a film emulsion.

In terms of rendering - both 4 and 5 work very well for my M10 dng files. Each contains some simulations which are not to my liking, but also each has quite many simulations which I absolutely love - delicate, beautiful and with that special separation of colors that only film can do.

Will it work for you? I don't know, everyone's taste is different. But I still hope this post may be useful to some.

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Guest Nowhereman
5 hours ago, evikne said:

Thanks for the tip! I prefer profiles instead of presets too, and I have tried several. These look very promising, so I'll take a look at them.

I'll be interested in what you conclude.

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Guest Nowhereman
16 hours ago, george-m said:

...In terms of rendering - both 4 and 5 work very well for my M10 dng files. Each contains some simulations which are not to my liking, but also each has quite many simulations which I absolutely love - delicate, beautiful and with that special separation of colors that only film can do.

Will it work for you? I don't know, everyone's taste is different. But I still hope this post may be useful to some.

Thanks for the explanation; very useful, as the only explanation that I could find on the RNI site was that the 5 profiles do not replace the 4. Both RNI versions work better with the M10 than the VSCO ones.

From what you say the C1ick Match profiles seems to work in a similar way to the RNI 5 and, from my very limited tryout of both, I felt that the C1ick ones could be substantially better. Why, I don't know, considering that neither are based on specific profiles of the camera model used.

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4 hours ago, Nowhereman said:

Thanks for the explanation; very useful, as the only explanation that I could find on the RNI site was that the 5 profiles do not replace the 4. Both RNI versions work better with the M10 than the VSCO ones.

It's possible to download a legitimate free demo of the RNI All Films 5 here: https://reallyniceimages.com/products/rni-all-films-5-demo-for-adobe-lightroom.html

It wasn't easy to find on their website, but I found it via Google. You have to pay a self-selected price before you are emailed a download link. 

I paid 1 USD and got five demo profiles which look very nice. It seems that the profiles work perfectly on their own when selected in the LR's Profile browser, but there are also corresponding presets in the Presets panel for each profile if you want to add grain. Maybe it isn't possible to embed grain into the profiles, or maybe they did it this way to give us the choice to add it or not.

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Guest Nowhereman

No, the "film look presets" portion of RNI 5, has two versions — one with grain and one without. C1ick Match does not offer grain simulation currently, although the developer seems to be working on that.

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Am 16.11.2019 um 16:44 schrieb Nowhereman:

I'll be interested in what you conclude.

My impression is that RNI works in a much more sophisticated way than the C1ick profiles. RNI seems to conjure up a myriad of details in the shadows, while the C1ick profiles mostly leave the shadows clipped and crushed. And it's true what they say, that the highlights are never blown out. So if you have a contrasty image, just drag the exposure slider up to bring out the shadow details, and the highlights will remain intact, with a very natural result.

The profiles also sync correctly with Adobe Cloud (VSCO and RNI 4 didn't), so I will probably purchase the RNI All Films 5 Pro as soon as I can afford it.

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On 11/17/2019 at 5:53 PM, erniethemilk said:

Anyone tried using the VSCO app?  The idea of pinging images from camera to phone and from there to VSCO for editing appeals, especially when travelling. 

Yes. I have all the presets for mobile. It doesn't compare to the desktop version AT ALL. 

The only presets on that app that can be adjusted within reason (in my opinion) that would be suitable is "C3" and "DOG 3" and "K1 AND K2". The others fade the shadows too much etc or are unrealistic.

Edited by maxfairclough
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On 11/19/2019 at 8:37 AM, evikne said:

My impression is that RNI works in a much more sophisticated way than the C1ick profiles. RNI seems to conjure up a myriad of details in the shadows, while the C1ick profiles mostly leave the shadows clipped and crushed. And it's true what they say, that the highlights are never blown out. So if you have a contrasty image, just drag the exposure slider up to bring out the shadow details, and the highlights will remain intact, with a very natural result.

The profiles also sync correctly with Adobe Cloud (VSCO and RNI 4 didn't), so I will probably purchase the RNI All Films 5 Pro as soon as I can afford it.

I tried - for me RNI 4 has successfully synced to Lightroom Mobile via Adobe Cloud. However it took much longer than VSCO or RNI 5. I suppose that's because RNI 4 has hundreds of megs of camera profiles in it, and Adobe Cloud is not the fastest cloud out there.

Personally I've changed my metering style after switching to RNI 5. Now I typically shoot underexposed by 1, 2 or even 3 EV. Sounds like a lot? And it is a lot. The picture comes out really dark. And then I apply an RNI profile (or preset) and push my exposure in Lightroom by 2 or 3 EV. And mostly it works like magic.

Not sure if I can explain the science behind this method, if there's any, but the results have really wide dynamic range and feel natural, very much like film. Wealth of detail, the colors look natural, nothing clips or blows out.

Here's how it looks:

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Edited by george-m
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On 21 November 2019 at 12:45 AM, maxfairclough said:

Yes. I have all the presets for mobile. It doesn't compare to the desktop version AT ALL. 

The only presets on that app that can be adjusted within reason (in my opinion) that would be suitable is "C3" and "DOG 3" and "K1 AND K2". The others fade the shadows too much etc or are unrealistic.

Thanks, I'll maybe give it a miss. Being new to Leica, I'm still trying to find my editing groove with 10 files. :)

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