I’m running Negative Lab Pro v3 in Adobe Lightroom Classic 15.3.1 (my first time using an Adobe product beyond Acrobat), on a sluggish Windows 10 laptop. I’m scanning 45-year-old Kodacolor 35 mm negatives with a Plustek OpticFilm 8100 using Silverfast SE 9 to create .dng files.
I have 120 rolls to scan and not much time or expertise, so I’m trying to get a batch process down. I’m very confused by Profile, the guides don’t explain it clearly. My TLDR is: during NLP’s [Convert NN Negatives], the images’ profile shown in Develop > Basic > Profile changes again, to “Negative Lab v2.3 - Frontier”, So do I need to assign the profile before NLP? Do I need to run the slow File > Plugin-Extras > Update Vuescan/Sliverfast DNGs then Metadata > Read Metadata from Files steps?
Here are more details about my confusion. I hope the Guides can be improved.
Getting Started - Basics says “ensure that the ‘Negative Lab v2.1’ raw profile is available”. But it doesn’t say where to look. I think I’m supposed to look at right side > Develop > Basic > Profile > click the drop-down > Browse… , which lists lots of “Negative Lab” profiles including “Negative Lab v2.1”. I wasn’t sure if “Negative Lab” is the most recent or the original.
The guide goes on to say ‘the profile should show “Negative Lab v2.1”’. But it doesn’t; when I first import negative images from SilverFast, Develop > Basic > Profile shows “Embedded” for all of them.
When I run ‘File > Plugin-Extras > Update Vuescan/Silverfast DNGs.’, it takes a while and I get an alert "To sync this update, click ‘Metadata > Read Metadata From File’. You should then be able to select the ‘Negative Lab’ camera profile’. (DOC BUG: the menu item is actually ‘Read Metadata from Files’.) This is more more confusion whether “Negative Lab” or “Negative Lab v2.1” is the profile to use.
But this alert is confusing. After the update is over, Develop > Basic > Profile shows “Negative Lab v2.3” for every negative image. So I don’t need to select anything, it’s done for me. (DOC BUG: I guess “Negative Lab v2.3” is actually the latest profile, even though I’m running Negative Lab Pro v3.)
Then when I finally run NLP and choose [Convert NN]Negatives] and the magic happens, the profile shown in Develop > Basic > Profile for all of them changes again, to Negative Lab v2.3 - Frontier. So did I really need to perform the slow File > Plugin-Extras > Update Vuescan/Sliverfast DNGs then Metadata > Read Metadata From File step? The only thing Read Metadata from Files seems to do is set the Profile, and then NLP’s [Convert NN Negatives] changes it.
(Also the Quick Start Guide Windows PDF says when you open NLP ‘The “Profile” should change to “Negative Lab …”.’ I’m not sure that happened, I think it changed after I clicked [Convert NN Negatives].)
Thanks. It really helps to have good explanations for this so we can use the tool efficiently in batch mode.