Hi @thobias and all -
Just an update here:
For whatever reason, there doesn’t seem to be a way to have custom DNG profiles for single color-plane files. The DNG spec is always look for 3 or more color planes (for example, R/G/B). This appears to be true even for monochrome digital cameras, like the Leica M10 Monochrome. The profile in Lightroom will always show “Monochrome” with no other options, and the “standard” Adobe tone curve will be built in.
That said, I’ve built a preset that will “undo” the Adobe standard tone curve, and will make the file as close to linear as possible. You can download that here:
You can import this preset into Lightroom, and apply to all your 16-bit monochrome DNGs prior to converting with Negative Lab Pro. This will essentially make the file linear prior to processing.
Since this is black and white, I then recommend using the “linear + gamma” tone profile in Negative Lab Pro, as this will most closely mimic black and white photo paper. From there you can just adjust the tones as you normally would.
This is what the result looks like with the image you sent:
I would see this as a good, neutral starting point, and it should be very very similar to the results of using 48-bit scan on the black and white image. And of course, there is lots of editability inside Negative Lab Pro to get the exact tones you want out of this black and white scan.
Hope that helps!
-Nate
Creator of Negative Lab Pro