If someone needs a free film inversion software I strongly recommend Darktable with Negadoctor module. If consistent true-to-film results are your priority this is a great tool. And I really discourage anyone from trying to invert manually using histogram stretching tool in photoshop. This method can lead to nothing but frustration — it completely ignores characteristic film Hurter–Driffield curve making results incredibly flat with lifted shadows and compressed highlights and can easily introduce color crossover.
Negadoctor is a much better alternative. It’s based on Cineon process doing it properly and true to the physics of film.
Thanks for the tips, Robert. I should’ve included Darktable; lots of folks have good things to say about it. However, I’d like to counter your complaint about manual inversion, as every single image I posted on this website since 2020 was inverted manually or using an app that automates that exact process. I like my results.
That’s interesting, you must be doing something to the contrast in post, because my attempts always resulted in lots of noise in the shadows, which on paper would not be visible due to the non linear response curve of the paper. Other methods correct this either by applying log D space inversion or mimicking the paper contrast.
I usually don’t touch the contrast in post; however, my scanner gives me workable TIFF files that have the correct gamma and white balance.
I found that RAWs can be more difficult sometimes (and I should have mentioned that on the inversion guide), as there are many ways to convert those files. I currently use LibRaw with custom logic but would probably need to do some research for a user-friendly solution I can share.
Robert Pustułka
Dmitri
Robert Pustułka
Dmitri