This was my favourite colour film, and I can’t really understand the (bad) reputation this film seems to have. I’ve scanned plenty of Kodachrome 25 transparencies, so I know what to expect, and if I’d shot this scene on K25, I’d expect a much richer, more saturated outcome than either of these. I’m not particularly convinced by either, to be honest. The Alien Skin rendition looks the best to me, while the DxO version doesn’t have the saturation I would expect. Only two of these plug-ins offers a Kodachrome 25 simulation – Alien Skin Exposure 5 and DxO FilmPack 4.5 Slow as heck, true, but I thought it had really nice colour rendition, good saturation and not too much contrast. I’ll start with the colour films, then move on to the black and white… 01 Kodachrome 25 There are plenty more, but I’ve chosen the ones I know best from my own film photography days. On their own, each of these plug-ins makes a good case, but it’s when you put them up against each other that you realise they can’t all be right… I don’t have test results for all of them with every film because they don’t all support the same range of emulsions – but the results are interesting nonetheless. So I’ve taken the same shot (above) and processed it using Alien Skin Exposure 5, Color Efex Pro, DxO FilmPack 4.5 and Silver Efex Pro, all of which promise to replicate the look of traditional film. One problem is that they don’t always look like the films I used to use another is that they don’t even agree with each other. But I’m also a bit sceptical, because many of the film simulations I see from plug-ins look quite suspect to me. So I’m especially interested in any film simulation software which promises to replicate the look and feel of traditional silver-based films. I love its richness, depth, unpredictability and character. It’s what I grew up with, and it’s what I made most of my photographic discoveries – and mistakes – with.
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