Grain2Pixel – A Better Way to Process Film?
Shot on Portra 800. I continue to be impressed by the amount of detail that can be pulled out of 35mm film.
One of my earliest blogs explained how I was originally scanning my film negatives (if you missed it you can read it here https://www.gregoryowain.co.uk/blog/how-i-scan-film). By and large the process of scanning with my digital camera, light table and film holder are largely the same, but after I had scanned more and more rolls of film I started to wonder if what I was doing created the best results. I was using the built-in negative digitizer of my Nikon D850 but as most people don’t use this or the D780, they scan the negatives as RAW files and convert them on their computer using post processing software.
Shot on Fuji Pro400H. Fungi can be found all year round but autumn is always the best season.
By far the most popular is a paid plug-in for Lightroom called Negative Lab Pro, however for people like me who aren’t sure dropping $99 (+ VAT) on a converter I decided to try a free alternative – Grain2Pixel (G2P). This is a newer piece of software that is instead a plug-in for Photoshop and, while it may not have every feature of Negative Lab Pro, makes an ideal starting point as it doesn’t cost anything. They key thing for me in trying to convert RAW images on my computer, was to see if I could get a greater level of colour accuracy and better contrast. In fact, one of the main criticisms of Nikon’s software was the overly contrasty look that crushed shadows and blew out highlights.
A view of the Grain2Pixel plugin in action. Batch processing is a useful feature if you have many images to process.
I won’t take you through a step-by-step guide of how to use G2P as I want to focus on the results it produces. Besides, I couldn’t do a better job than the official instructions you can see here: https://grain2pixel.com/guide. To summarise though, once the plug-in is installed, it is straight forward to use and gives you plenty of options to play around with until you get your scan right. One of the first images I scanned and converted was this shot of a Barn owl you can see below, and I really was shocked at the difference. The image on the left from the Nikon has a huge amount of colour noise as well as both a green and red tint across the whole image. In comparison the image processed through G2P on the left has far more accurate, true to life colours, no colour noise and subsequently a bit more detail throughout. It was at this moment I realised that this was probably the way forward.
Shot on Portra 800. The difference between the image processed by the Nikon on the left and G2P on the right was shocking when I first compared the two side by side.
Next up was an image I shot of sleeping African wild dogs on a different trip to a zoo. What had struck me when I first scanned this was how green and magenta the colours were. I had shot this on Portra 160 and so was expecting more of a teal and orange look instead of something more fitting for Fujifilm. Low and behold when I put this image through G2P, the Portra colours I expected were there and with the added benefits of less harsh contrast and no digital noise. It started to become apparent that a green tinge was a theme of the Nikon software which, thinking about it does make some sense. The Nikon D850 shots generally have always come out a little on the green side and as they are a Japanese company it makes sense that a lot of their testing would be with Fujifilm (from Japan) which does have a greener and more magenta look to it than Kodak’s American offerings. However, the harshness of this look is beyond what any Fujifilm should look like.
Shot on Portra 160. The classic Portra colours returned for the image on the right, which was processed by G2P.
Following on from this I put some images shot on Fuji Pro400H through G2P to see the results and they were largely inline with what happened with the shots taken on Portra. However, despite the removal of the green colour cast, the images have in no way been ‘Portrafied’. Comparing them to other images online they still look as I would expect Pro400H to look. The shot of the BMW is quite telling as the one out of the Nikon has lost almost all of its autumn colouration and more closely resembles the greenery of spring.
Shot on Fuji Pro400H. The image of the left processed by the Nikon software has lost almost all of the autumn colouration that you can see in the more colour accurate image on the right.
Shot on Fuji Pro400H. The image processed by G2P on the right has in no way been ‘Portrafied’ it still retains the correct loom you would expect from Pro400H.
Finally, I decided to test B&W film, as in theory there shouldn’t be any issues with colour casts or noise. Seeing the results, this did turn out to be correct. The stronger contrast is still there with Nikon’s negative digitizer, whereas G2P produced a less contrasty more middle grey image. As there’s in theory less to process it must be much easier for both sets of software to get it right.
Shot on Kentmere Pan 400. The Nikon processed image on the left shows a higher level of contrast than the G2P image on the right but otherwise the differences are negligible.
In conclusion I really am enjoying using G2P as for my colour negative images it is producing much better results, which have really made me appreciate how much detail you can pull out of 35mm film. That’s not to say it always gets everything right first time, and I find you do need to play with the three levels of colours correction (none, smart & extra) to get the best results. It can also struggle a bit more with medium format images much like the Nikon software did. When it comes to converting film to digital there will never be a perfect solution so it’s best not to develop an unhealthy fixation on colour accuracy. If it is already 95% there, you can also fix this to your liking in Lightroom in any case. Going forward I will use this for all my colour negative images, but I may stick with using the negative digitizer for B&W for the sake of expediency as the differences are so negligible.
Shot on Pro400H. A final comparison showing how much less green (and in this case less blue) the G2P processed image on the right is.
Have you tried processing your scans on the computer with either Grain2Pixel or Negative Lab Pro? I’ll provide the links below if you want to check either of them out. As always let me know your thoughts in the comments section down below.
Grain2Pixel: https://grain2pixel.com/
Negative Lab Pro: https://www.negativelabpro.com/
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