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Film emulation

The film engine

How Luttie's film emulation works — negative stocks, print or scan, camera log sources, exposure, printer lights, crosstalk and strength.

The Film panel runs your image through a model of how colour film works: light exposes a negative, and the negative is then either printed onto print film (as cinema did) or scanned (as photo labs do). The look comes from those two stages, not from a colour filter laid on top.

Grading with the film engine is free. Exporting the result as a LUT is part of Pro.

The Film panel: negative, print, source, then exposure and lights.
The Film panel: negative, print, source, then exposure and lights.

Negative

Pick a stock and the film engine switches on. None switches it off. Each stock is Luttie's own, shaped after the published curves of the film named under it:

StockInspired byCharacter
Tungsten 500Kodak Vision3 500TNight and interiors; soft toe, clean cool shadows
Daylight 250Kodak Vision3 250DDaylight exteriors; neutral and clean
Portrait 400Kodak Portra 400Low contrast, warm skin, pastel highlights
Vivid 100Kodak Ektar 100Saturated, punchy colour
Soft 500Fuji Eterna 500Muted colour, gentle contrast

These are models, not measurements of real film. Luttie isn't affiliated with Kodak or Fujifilm.

Print

  • Cinema Print (inspired by Kodak 2383): the contrasty, dense-black projection look, with cool shadows and warm highlights.
  • Soft Print (inspired by Fuji 3513DI): gentler contrast and saturation.
  • Scan: no print. The softer look people know from film photography.

The print matters as much as the negative. Try the same negative through all three.

Source

Tell the engine what your image is:

  • sRGB / Rec.709 for ordinary photos and video.
  • Sony S-Log3, Canon C-Log3, Nikon N-Log, Apple Log, Apple Log 2 or DJI D-Log for log footage. The engine decodes the camera's log curve and colour gamut first, so there's no separate conversion LUT to add. See Log footage.

Exposure

  • Exposure, in stops: film responds differently from a digital slider. More exposure lifts the shadows off the film's toe and turns colours pastel; less sinks them.
  • Push / pull: development in stops. Pushing adds contrast, pulling softens it.

Printer lights (Scan balance when scanning)

Balance colour the way a lab did, in points:

  • Red, Green, Blue: more light on a colour means less of that colour in the image. More red light gives a cooler result; more blue light, a warmer one.
  • Density: all three together, for a darker or lighter print.

Crosstalk and Strength

  • Crosstalk controls how much the negative's dye layers interact, which is where each stock's saturation comes from. 100 is the stock as modelled; lower is more muted, higher more vivid.
  • Strength mixes the film result with the image going into it. 100 is the full effect.

Where to go next