how I convert my film negatives | negative lab pro & film lab

Sharing my process of converting film negatives. Thank you to Squarespace for sponsoring this video. For 10% off your first purchase, go to squarespace.co... and use code MATTDAY at checkout.
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[@chadroberts44]

I just finished a huuuge project scanning and processing all my family's negatives from way back. 1940's, 50's, 60's until about the 2000's. I scanned in over 12,000 negatives and processed them with Negative Lab Pro and Lightroom. Took me about 6 months. But it is an awesome project completed and I uploaded all them to Google Drive and shared them with all my family members. Such a great way to preserve things of yesteryear. If a fire ever happened all those negatives and prints are now preserved.

[@bks3]

That's a collosal task and admire you undertaking it! I have 10 years of negatives I'm intending to archive in the same way, but I've been putting it off. Reading this has made my task feel smaller so thank you haha

[@NathanDove]

Film lab has come a long way! I think it beats NLP for portraits at this point. I've always found skin tones in NLP to be severely lacking. Film lab just nails them right out of the gate.

[@sabergo1]

Well done. The film lab software looks pretty straightforward (simple) in comparison to NLP. Probably intended to move from there to other editors. Looked good when you were done.

[@ezpoppy55]

Thank you, Matt! You made it sooner rather than later 👍🏼. I really appreciate the overview.

[@victorll8731]

Timing is insane. Thank you

[@jungaIized]

Great video! I‘m still using a Pakon 135 but at the moment i‘m messing around with exporting the pakon scans as raw files and converting them with external software. Can you recommend any conversion app for iPad-OS? Edit: i just found out that there is a Film lab app for ios

[@andyvan5692]

great preview of this software, PS, does this work on black and white negatives too?

[@TheChosenOne_]

its interesting seeing someone adjust so much in NLP. I usually keep everything standard and just use exposure and brightness controls to get a good base image. Then contrast and saturation in LR itself.

[@sammyblaze4234]

I always edited my scans with adobe lightroom since i've already need it for my digital photos, what's the difference to edit scans with negative lab pro?

[@harryvlogs7833]

How funny I also have lumix s5ii and have been shooting kodak 35mm film gold 200

[@melanieescobar1422]

Does anybody know if we can use an epson v600 scanner on a iPad Pro and edit through this software?

[@qitiansong4827]

Hello Matt! Nice video, appreciate! May I ask what if u don't change the white balance and directly convert it, what will happen?

[@janulmann3232]

I imagine since you don't correct the white balance, the converted white balance will be off - and it will look very orange, since you didn't correct that beforehand.

[@qitiansong4827]

@@janulmann3232 Thanks!! but when I use negative lab pro it won't be orange anymore

[@evanlawrence5815]

Fellow Linear Gamma stan

[@ram07ish]

Film Lab is double the price of Negative Lab Pro.

[@AI-Hallucination]

Topman but you need a mechanical keyboard seen your desk trust me they tactile you. You Will Understand 😂 it's the analogue of the virtual

[@pdp11]

No.

[@AI-Hallucination]

@@pdp11 because there are children involved in this channel, I am not going to metaphysical dismantle you with the linguistically so jog on knobhead

[@lukerand]

Hey I use Film Lab a lot and I have a tip for you! You noticed that switching the film stock to Kodak Gold made the colors really cool. It’s not very intuitive, but you need to then click on the “Auto” button at the top after changing the film stock to get to the right starting point. Great video!

[@IntrovertAmateur]

Thank you very much Matt for the deep dive into how you convert your film negatives. I'm currently simply drop off my film at the lab to get it developed and scanned, but seeing how much you can influence the look regarding the film stock (which is no surprise) makes me curious to try it myself someday (and want to get extra gear to scan :D). Is your process similar for black and white film? Thanks again for your great work and sharing!

[@mattdayphoto]

Thanks for watching! Black and white process is the exact same, just making small adjustments until I get to what feels right.

[@KoenRH2803]

Been waiting for this one! Thanks Matt

[@mattdayphoto]

Thanks for watching!

[@ThomasL.116]

Maybe it has also to do with the way the portrait for the second software was shot, but i found the converting result of the second software to be of a much stronger character, it looked amazing!

[@coreymcsween697]

I always seem to struggle with crazy white balance using negative lab Pro. I feel like it’s because of the way I do the scans in the camera maybe the exposure or white balance in camera?

[@thetooth]

Same, all my images look like that red scene from blade runner 2049, have to adjust just about everything to get it back to normal.

[@jungaIized]

Since you were a heavy pakon user: How do you compare scanning with the lumix to scanning with the pakon concerning the results?

[@nathanblanchard8451]

I'm a little lost after Matt applies NLP. I can see I have a stack of the original negative and the copy, but when I expand the stack I don't see the copy. At first I thought it was because I didn't have virtual copies viewable but that doesn't seem to make a difference. If anyone has time to tell me what simple button I'm forgetting I'd be eternally grateful!

[@cggg490]

hope you already figured this out but you just go back to library and the date to find the scanned conversion and the positive copy tiff to work with. I don't know of another way to get there faster.

[@kalialexander36]

👍

[@jorghahn2903]

Thank you Matt! I’m confused now. After processing the scanned photo in NLP, are we still seeing the colors of the original film stock or are we seeing the colors as interpreted by NLP? To be honest, I’ve never really understood what sense it makes to shoot film and then process the scanned photo in NLP, Lightroom etc. Does the film stock then still matter at all?

[@mattdayphoto]

The film stock does matter because each film stock is going to behave differently and give you a different look to work with, but you can of course make adjustments to make one stock look a little bit closer to another. That being said, all of these adjustments in NLP are essentially the same kind of adjustments a Frontier, Noritsu, or any other film scanner is going to make. The same negative will look many different ways depending on the scanner that’s used, who is scanning the film, the adjustments made, etc. There’s no real “pure” film look you’re going to get from a scanner because even if we left everything on auto and made no manual adjustments, let’s say we did that with 3 different film scanners, the results will be 3 different looking scans because even the scanners have to make their own interpretation of the negative and the colors within it. I hope that makes sense! Let me know if anything else needs further explanation.

[@jorghahn2903]

@@mattdayphoto Thank you, Matt, for your detailed answer! I didn’t know this. I thought that a scan from the lab would give me the “authentic” look of the film. I’ve only started to shoot film again recently (and not a lot) and so far I’ve relied on the scans from the lab. So how does all this then compare to the processing of film in the pre-digital age when I just took the film to the lab and they returned to me the prints? Was this the true look of the film?