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Negative Lab Pro - Converting Color Negatives

2022 © Thomas Gade

Index: From Negative to Positive

Negative Lab Pro is a plugin for Adobe Lightroom and costs US$99.

Website: https://www.negativelabpro.com/

Negative Lab Pro works with Adobe Lightroom. It cannot be used with Adobe Photoshop.

Installation

There is no automatic installer. Instead, the download contains several folders and an English-language installation guide explaining where the files need to be copied so that Negative Lab Pro is available as a Lightroom plugin.

Using Negative Lab Pro




A photographed film negative opened in Adobe Lightroom.



Open Negative Lab Pro using the following menu:

File -> Plug-in Extras -> Negative Lab Pro

You can also assign a keyboard shortcut for quicker access.



The negative is immediately displayed with more natural-looking colors. Click Convert Negatives to begin the conversion process. One important setting is Border Buffer. The default value is 5%, which excludes the border area from the tonal analysis. If you included a small border around the film when photographing it, that area will simply be ignored.



You can also select multiple images and process them as a batch. This feature is particularly convenient. In this example, six negatives are selected, and the button reads Convert 6 Negatives. Batch processing could hardly be simpler.



A progress bar indicates that the images are being processed.




After a short time, Negative Lab Pro has created the Lightroom settings required to convert all six negatives into positive images.



The Shadows slider is used to brighten the dark areas of the image.




In another example, the shadows are also too dark and contain very little visible detail.



Once again, adjusting the Dark slider reveals significantly more shadow detail.

Evaluation

If you use a compatible version of Adobe Lightroom, Negative Lab Pro is an excellent tool for converting photographed film negatives into positive images quickly and with impressive results. At US$99, the software is reasonably priced and offers excellent value for anyone who regularly digitizes color negatives.