Grain2Pixel, a Photoshop Script for Converting Film Negative Scans ⇥ grain2pixel.com

I got a batch of film scans from the developer today and realized I needed a better process for converting them — better, that is, than the way I had been doing it, which was to flip the curves in Lightroom and then do all my corrections in reverse.

I played around with the Filmomat SmartConvert demo but I did not like the workflow enough to consider paying for it. I really like the results I got from Negative Lab Pro and I think the USD $99 price tag is reasonable. However, its main selling point — that DNG scans remain in DNG format — is also its drawback: your workflow is still going to be the reverse of what you expect because, under the hood, the image is still a negative.

That pushed me to trying Grain2Pixel which, from a getting-started perspective, is more cumbersome than the other two options, particularly as MacOS is alarmed you are trying to use unsigned software.

But once you get that sorted out and install the script, it makes quick work out of batch processing a folder of DNGs into TIFF images. Then you can import them into Lightroom and make corrections in positive colour. You do not need to worry too much about a loss of range — TIFF is plenty flexible in post, at least for my amateur purposes. I am very happy with the resulting images.