Hello, question about the AgX film simulation module in ART. When I open a raw with just the auto tone curve applied, it looks like so.
When I activate the AgX module with default values, the image gets like this, quite dark. Is this normal behaviour?
Hi,
If you want the same rendering as with the “standalone AgX”, you should turn off the tone curve.
I have no idea what you mean by the base image. If you only applied AgX, that should be the same as exporting an image as 16-bit png with the neutral profile, and applying the same settings from the AgX gui. That’s all…
HTH
@paulmatth I also usually get very dark contrasty images with default settings in Agx. But then I can fix that by carefully increasing Input gain (Ev) or decreasing Print exposure. If it is still too contrasty you can fix that by using regular tools in the Exposure tab.
That’s what I always (must) do! I thought (and still think) that my AgX setup is in one way or another corrupted. I’ll have a new look at that when I have some time left.
Would be interesting to hear from other AgX users what is their experience with it. Maybe even the Master himself Alberto could give us some pointers on its usage. For now I mostly experiment with different combinations of Film stock and Print paper to see which rendering I like the most.
The default Film stock (Kodak Portra 400) and Print paper (Kodak Endura Premier) give a very contrasty result. Some other combinations look more natural. For example below I show the result with with a less contrasty result (left is the raw with “neutral” profile, right is the AgX emulsion):
Agree, Kodak Vision combinations produce less “drastic” results. Also Fuji film and paper give better greens for my photos. I also always enable Auto adjust for Print filter shift, it seems colors are a bit better with it.
The Auto adjust doesn’t always give better colors IMO, for the film/print combination I tried the colors lookes less natural in my example image. But sometimes it does work for some combinations.
