RustyRus wrote: fjablo wrote: RustyRus wrote: fjablo wrote: RustyRus wrote: fjablo wrote: RustyRus wrote: fjablo wrote: Nifty Fifty wrote:
Basically, all we need is the acceptance that digital is not analog and the realization that you should put in the work to expose film if you want film results.
Film presets are like a Nikon Zf. They evoke analog photography, but it's just folklore.
I mostly agree.
However it is theoretically possible to emulate the analog imaging process with digital. It's just not easy and all those emulations fail.
Currently having Claude build on his code to build a little app for my Mac that also handles the RAW conversion bit
Did you read about what Cobalt is doing?
Elite Kodachrome by Cobalt
Kodachrome, not “Kodachrome-inspired”
Kodachrome Elite is our highest-end Kodachrome emulation, built to reproduce the distinctive colour relationships and tonal behaviour of real Kodachrome slides with a controlled, repeatable workflow. This is designed for photographers who care about consistency, not quick stylistic presets.
Built on access to authentic Kodachrome slide development
After years of work, we gained access to a privately preserved K-14 Kodachrome slide-development workflow tied to genuine Kodachrome slide processing, maintained within a family lineage connected to a former Kodak employee and carried forward by a professional chemist. This was not a modern “Kodachrome-style” experiment or a commercial approximation. It enabled us to work from Kodachrome slides developed specifically as controlled reference material for measurement and modelling. Kodachrome Elite exists in this form only because we were able to ground it in true Kodachrome slide development, rather than imitations.
Precision in colourimetry and tonal response
Kodachrome Elite is engineered for film-referenced colourimetry and a purpose-shaped contrast response. Contrast is intentionally designed to reflect Kodachrome’s characteristic separation and presence, rather than a neutral raw rendering.
Three profile variants: NB, B, and PR
Each Kodachrome Elite profile is provided in three variants, representing three authentic ways Kodachrome is experienced in practice:
NB (Non-Balanced): Scan-realistic. Preserves the natural scan bias and mood you typically see when the grey axis is not fully normalised. This is the “as-scanned character” option.
B (Balanced): Grey-axis aligned. Balanced through the full greyscale for a neutral, predictable foundation and colour-critical consistency.
PR (Projected): Slide-projection interpretation. Tuned to evoke the perceptual experience of a living transparency on a screen, with the punch and presence associated with projection rather than a flat scan.
Yes I did. It is a long and windy way of saying "we built a 3D LUT". It fails the same way all other pre-sets fail, no magic here.
Good thing you have Claude I guess
No it's good that we have people like Andrea Volpato who is thinking this through and able to map a proper imaging pipeline that simulates the way how film and paper interact with light.
The only thing Claude is doing is building a nice application around Andrea's code and some open source libraries that handle RAW files.
Awesome- let’s see some examples how you use this imaging pipeline and it’s accurate film representation. -
Apologies that this seems to be way over your head and you feel offended by it.
If someone likes the Cobalt profiles and wants to buy them despite the high price tag that's perfectly fine with me. I just think it's a shame that there is no commercially available app that does what this guy has built with Python. E.g. it takes 7 minutes to simulate a 45mp image from the Nikon Z7, clearly there is room to optimize performance a lot.
Lol-
So what you are saying is you have a bunch of data and can't get any pictures to look decent from all of it.
Who is in over their head here?
Its so funny we are talking about profiles from a company that has clearly done its homework and made it commercially available. Yet here you are saying its hogwash but can't make a decent profile from the smarter, more scientific guy on Github.
Have fun playing with AI and some other guys research!
Wow you're really a special type of.. You realize there is no pre-built app for that github code and that I am adding a complete RAW develop module, right How easy do you think that is to do from scratch?
Here's a screenshot from the prototype I built *today* and I'm not a programer. Obviously not everything is working as smoothly yet as I'd want it too.. Sample attached too as a proof of concept.
How easy do you think that is to do from scratch? 
