Negative Lab Pro v2.2 - The Next Level of Color, Tone & Control

Hi Nate,
many thanks for the great tool, it´s excellent.
Matthias

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Hi Nate,many many thanks for providing us such superb updates.
I will definitely recommend NLP to every possible user.
THX.

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Great job with v2.2. Here’s another vote for adding some form of vibrance/saturation sliders in NLP. I would really rather not have to create large tiff files of all my digital negatives.

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Congrats and thank you for your hard work and the update. Great new features!

Still, please look into one thing, that still is not working with LR Classic (I currently am on the newest version on a Mac running Mojave, updates of LR CC are installed when released):
After hitting convert, picture still shows the negative. I have to switch profiles (any will do) to see the converted positive. Dragging any sliders does not help, you must change the profile first.
This was the case with the previous version as well - including different versions of LR Classic.

@nate, what is the relation between, say, the Frontier Color Model on the first tab and the Frontier LUT on the second tab?

Does it make sense to either select both of the same name or mix whatever does the job? Are there any limitations or recommendations concerning mix or match? Can you please elaborate?

Hey everyone, so I have a problem with the update, maybe somebody here can help me.
I updated as per guide, when I do conversions it afterwards says ‘Profile missing’ under Negative Lab v.2.1. They also look very redish and not correct.

I’m pretty sure it’s on me but I can’t figure out why. I scan via Vuescan, settings as in the guide, dedicated filmscanner, loaded the update, it says v2.2 in the plug-in manager. If I convert negative dng’s I did before the update, they come out very nice and as expected. Even if I delete them from lightroom and import them in new, but only freshly scanned dng’s behave that way. I have all the profiles loaded in, if I try to load them in again it tells me that all of them are already there.

I already tried to delete NegLab from Lightroom and install it again, that doesn’t work. What might I have done wrong here or what can I maybe try to fix this?

When I go to Lightroom Plug-in Manager, in LR Classic, and select a Plug-in it usually tells me the version number of the Plug-in I have installed. Unfortunately, NLP does not. It is a convenient way of checking that I have the latest version. Is it possible to include this feature please?

Profile” shown in the LR Develop module says “Negative Lab v2.0,” not 2.2. Is this normal?

Answer: Yes

Nate I suggest that you actually rename the profiles even tho they haven’t been updated, so they match the version to avoid user confusion and user time wasting trying to figure out what they have done wrong.

Hi, this sounds like one a few things could be happening.

  1. Make sure you are scanning RAW DNGs – it’s very easy to get the settings wrong in Vuescan - where it will create a DNG, but it will not be raw (it will just be a TIFF with a DNG wrapper). In that case, the profiles would not load, and that would be why the previous scanned worked and the new ones do not.
  2. If you are using a different scanner or a different version of Vuescan, you may need to run “File > Plugin Extras > Update Vuescan/Silverfast DNG.” This will update the metadata to make sure Lightroom recognizes the scanner correctly.

It does show the version number.

You just need to scroll down in that window below where it has the license key activate information.

Screen Shot 2020-10-05 at 11.14.10 AM

You can also always see the version number on top of the tool itself when you use it.

Screen Shot 2020-10-05 at 11.14.23 AM


This would cause major issues and headaches. For instance, if I renamed these profiles as v2.2, it would immediately break all of your old conversions in LR (because LR would be looking for v2.0 or v2.1 and without finding them, would default back to “Adobe Standard” profile, thus changing the foundation of the image and breaking the conversion).

I’ll just try to communicate better what you should expect to see. As of now:

Camera Scanning Current Profile Version: “Negative Lab v2.0”
Vuescan/Silverfast Current Profile: “Negative Lab v2.1”


Good question!

The LUTs allow for much more precise emulations than the pre-conversion color models (which are changing colors more broadly). It’s also nice to be able to adjust the LUTs after conversion, rather than having to go back and reconvert. For this reason, I’m starting to move away a bit from the pre-conversion color models and more towards the LUTs.

In general, I would recommend using the “standard” color model since it will be the most neutral conversion and gives me the most flexibility in editing (you can still use other color models options, you just may end up wanting to use a different strength on the LUT). On my Fuji XT-2, I always have it set now to Standard color model and Pre-Sat 5. Then adjust the type and strength of LUTs profiles after conversion.

Hope that helps!

…does standard refer to
a) the pre-conversion “Basic” Color Model of the first tab or
b) the “LAB-Standard” Tones of the second tab?

if standard referred to case a), this would basically mean that you could omit the pre-conversion color model selector in a future release of NLP?

As of today, NLP offers many degrees of freedom, which has the potential for almost perfect (whatever that means) conversions as well as more complicated operation, at least for cases as I got with negatives that are both old and shot with a variety of emulsions processed by a multitude of labs.

I meant to say “Basic Color Model” - so choice (A).

And yes, that means in a future release, I could potentially omit that… the only consideration is that Lightroom 6 users can’t currently make use of the LUTS.

Thank you Nate. Lots of good stuff here. The color temp is much more intuitive than before, I really appreciate the picker, and it does seem that “out of the box” requires less work to finish than before. I wonder if I missed something on the install though. I have the LUTS, but the VueScan DNG profile is still 2.1. Is there a later version that I somehow missed?

Celac

A few posts up, Nate elaborates on profile version numbers. Maybe that helps…

Thanks. I guess I didn’t read that close enough. It seemed to me that 2.2 would simply get added as option.

Celac

This update is very good! I get perfect colors right within the plugin. Perfect light recovery and the WB tool is very usable. Thank you very much!
I’m redoing all of my favorite negatives with this version.

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Hey Nate,

So in response to this question earlier:

after I convert, the “Profile” shown in the LR Develop module says “Negative Lab v2.0,” not 2.2. Is this normal?

What if I only see “Color” in the “Profile” section but no “Negative Lab v2.x” no matter what I do?

Nate,

I loveeeeeeee the Ver 2.2 update to NLP. However, ever since I upgraded to the newest version, Lightroom crashes constantly and only seems to crash when using NLP to convert color scans. I have done all sorts of troubleshooting and completely changed my workflow around and I can only pinpoint the issues I started having to AFTER upgrading to Ver 2.2.

I have made completely new LR catalog and reduced the number of files in the catalog. I have changed to a faster Read/Write external drive. I even reduced the bit depth of the files from 48 to 24. Nothing seems to be able to affecting the crashes which again only occur when I’m converting color scans with NLP Ver 2.2.

I’m using a 2.26 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo iMac running MacOS Mojave 10.14.6 (older Mac alas cannot be upgraded to the newest MacOS release).
I’m using Adobe Lightroom Classic, Ver 9.4 and my files are Vuescan .dng saved at 2600dpi, 24bit (yes I know that NLP is optimized for 48bit).

When converting color scans with NLP 2.2 I never run any other apps while using Lightroom, but nothing else crashes except Lightroom while using NLP 2.2; Photoshop as bloated as it is runs like a champ!

Any ideas on what could be causing the crashing? Is there a way to downgrade back to Ver 2.1? I’m at my wits end on fixes and if I can’t get the crashing to stop I’ll have to give up shooting color film as the constant crashing is messing up my workflow.

HELP!

If you have a backup from that time, you could copy the components back to your current drive. I’ve posted the locations somewhere in the forum, but cannot find the place right now. Anyway, have a look at this: The beta killed my NLP and I can't revive it

Thanks!!! I’m going to try scanning my MF files as .tiff positives like I’ve been doing for my 35mm film and see if that helps. It’s the last thing I can think of…seeing as NLP was written for DSLR digitizing originally maybe I just need to go ahead & buy a new camera and fully make the switch. Anyway, thank you for the assist @Digitizer!

Hmm… that’s the first I’ve heard of that…

  • At what point in the process does Lightroom crash? Is it during the conversion process? Or at another point in the editing process?
  • Does it crash everytime? Or only some times?
  • Do you get any kind of error message? Or does LR just close?
  • Was there anything unusual about your install process? I assume you ran the Mac installer file? I’ve seen some issues caused when people try to install manually on Mac instead of running the installer.

The only thing I can think to try is to remove the current install (delete the .lrplugin file from your harddrive and remove from the “file > plugin manager”). And then get a fresh download and try to install fresh.

-Nate