I wrote this guide four years ago after researching ways to personally take over the process that traditional scanning and film inversion apps obfuscate.
I needed to know how exactly the software affects the colours of my film to identify and control the visual differences between film stocks and measure the effects of my lenses, filters, and exposures.
Having learned a great deal about the transformative path of a negative with an orange mask to a digital colour image, I could confidently write film reviews where I measured and compared minute differences between film stocks (whereas others may’ve deferred to internet lore, marketing material, or inconsistent scanning workflows). I could also get more image data out of my scans and gain greater editing flexibility.
This weekend, I rewrote the guide completely and added new illustrations. It’s no longer focused on Photoshop or any particular editing tool, and the new article explains the theory much more diligently (with examples).
Dmitri Mar 22, ‘25