inverting photos of color negatives with darktable

  1. correct the camera or scanner colour using exposure, input profile and white balance (which, in this case, correct the light going through the film to the sensor), to get a scan properly exposed between 0 and 100%, and remove colour casts due to the sensor,
  2. enable negadoctor, and correct:
    1. the Dmin, which is the colour of the orange mask or the density of the film substrate (a colour picker will be added soon),
    2. the Dmax, which is the paper density (same concept as the dynamic range but in dB/log10 unit, instead of the EV/log2)
    3. the WB coefficients (R, G, B) to correct colour casts due to the film emulsion, (colour picker planned here too),
    4. the negative inversion offset, to anchor the black level during the inversion process (9% by default comes from Kodak Cineon recommendations),
  3. then adjust the printing adjustments to your taste.
  4. denoise, sharpen, dehaze if needed.
  5. finish with colour balance if you need more contrast or split-toning / warm paper effects.

The actual pixel operations performed are stupid simple, the whole code takes 5 lines. (But 540 lines of GTK UI madness).

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