Film simulation and Dehancer

Do you remember when it became trendy to emulate cross processing? Or when bleach bypass became all the rage? Or when HDR was suddenly the new thing everyone was trying? All the photos made in these trendy bubbles are now obsolete and not pleasant. That’s because they were a reaction to what was perceived as popular, and as we all know, trends of the past often look ridiculous when seen with modern eyes. Just think of some haircuts or outfits from decades ago!

Since a couple years, film emulation earned its place as a popular photographic aesthetic trend: despite its welcome resurgence, shooting film for real is becoming more expensive and less practical day after day, especially in some areas, and that’s one reason many are turning to software for achieving a film aesthetic. Others do it just out of laziness or lack of confidence with true film.

I’m not interested in following trends, but I am very interested in finding solutions for real problems. I definitely think it’s not wise to emulate film for following a trend or because we want to mimic a style we saw somewhere: these motivations are leading to later finding ourselves with outdated photos that don’t really reflect who we are, but are just a statement to some momentary impression of the eve changing visual discourse. 

But as I said, I am all for finding solutions for problems. Photography is mostly that: solving problems, with the goal of achieving our vision. I do think there are at least two good reasons for wanting to emulate film: one is if the client asks for film and it is not possible to shoot with it. The other one is if we need to achieve some of the features that come with film.

These are practical reasons and so I am interested in them. Let’s take a look at both.

The client wants to shoot film.

If a client needs film, we must provide film. I moved to a full digital workflow since long and this is a situation I lived a couple of times in my profession. A client comes to you and asks for a specific film stock, or just a realistic film aesthetic. There could be many reasons for that, it’s not necessarily a caprice.

Here in my island almost no one develops film anymore, and buying it means ordering it online. The time and costs are making it not practical for many professional scenarios, when deadlines are important, and even for recreational purposes. I would very much prefer to shoot actual film — also considering I own tens of film cameras I just love — but for me it’s not practical.

So, what can we do if we can’t use film? If we can’t do that, we must use a software solution.

I tried lots of systems and presets, and to make it short, in the end I found Dehancer to be the best solution if you need to realistically simulate film, and if you are ready to put some efforts into learning how to use it.

Just a note about the terms: Dehancer is a film simulation software. It uses algorithms meant to simulate film with a scientific approach. Emulation is something else entirely: it means tweaking parameters until an image looks like film. That’s the approach used by common presets or Photoshop actions, for instance.

We want to achieving film features

The first film feature that comes to your mind is probably grain.

But grain is not only a way for mimicking analog photography. It is an instrument we can use for abstracting our pictures, removing what’s not necessary and aiming at the essential. Think of Georges Seurat for instance.

By applying grain digitally we can decide how much we want to affect details, removing all the unnecessary ones until our photo still looks complete if seen from a definite distance. That’s what we should care the most. Do we need to see the single eyelashes? Or is it enough to see their essential abstraction?

We live in an era of high megapixel count, but our photography is generally meant to be seen on small screens and prints. And yet we are used to record and share a huge amount of fine detail that is not necessary nor useful. That detail is also accentuated by digital sharpening. Smartphones considerably contributed to the popularity of the over sharpened aesthetic.

By using grain we can mitigate the issue and bring our photos to a simpler, optimized form.  A good simulation of grain is a solution to the problem of redundant information and hyper sharpening.

Some might say: what about digital noise? Ain’t it doing the same? Yes and no.

If we could agree that in principle digital noise is eroding detail and simplifying our photos, at the same time we can’t ignore the fact that the visual presentation is completely different. Digital noise is not grain, just like a lemon is not an orange.

The main fact is that film grain has a plastic nature, it exists in 3 dimensions. It is made of blobs, and these blobs embrace, connect and distort the elements of the image. Digital noise is just pixels with different colors and brightness. 

With Dehancer we can apply a convincing simulation of film grain and we can do it gradually: that’s a huge benefit compared to both digital noise and even real film grain. Because there is no optimal out of the box amount of grain that fits perfectly every scene and subject. Working digitally we can gradually adapt until we get where we want to go.

An usual film emulation workflow

When we shoot analogue the lens interacts with the film, and the film is then developed and printed. Many of the visual properties of the final images are already in the film. The developer can affect some parameters but the personality of the film (allow me this term) is already there, with all its interpretation of colors and tones, its grain, its highlight fallout curve and so on.

When we shoot digital, the lens interacts with a digital sensor. Modern CMOS digital sensors are not made to display a specific character, they are made for capturing scenes in a neutral way, with as much detail and dynamic range as their technology allows.

Developing a raw file coming from a sensor means giving our interpretation of these data. When we develop a raw file, we already do what the film stock would do: we are applying our personality, our take on colors, tones, noise, etc.

The typical and popular “film emulation workflow” is usually like this: photographers import their photos in a software like Lightroom or Capture One, develop the raw with all the basic edits, and then apply a preset made for simulating film. Sometimes they work the file in Photoshop or Affinity Photo and then bring it back to Lightroom / Capture One and apply the film preset.

The results of this workflow are unsurprisingly unpredictable. The same presets give totally different results on different photos from the same set. And that’s because of all the steps involving developing, manipulating, color space conversions and so on.

Another big offender is the white balance. When we shoot film, the white balance is baked in the film stock. When we shoot digital, we can have auto white balance, or we can change it later when developing the raw file. This has a huge impact on the subsequent film emulation, because white balance can drastically alter the outcome of the “film presets”.

Most “film presets” are built by trial and error, and this shows when you compare them to each other. Just take a look at the countless Portra 400 simulations out there, where the look goes from the faded muted greens to the slide-like vivid colors. Who is right? Which ones is a proper emulation? How can they differ so much if they are supposedly emulating the same film stock?

This situation made me lose all interest in film simulations, long ago. I just could not embrace the randomness of the results. You can choose to simulate Ektachrome for a photo session and then still have many photos from the same set displaying different looks: what is the point?

Enter Dehancer

So it was clear that the usual presets based film emulation was not a good solution for me. I tried it with some clients and results were satisfying nor me nor the clients. So I kept searching and at some point I realized Dehancer also offered photo editing tools (I already used it for video).

I will give you the final take on this right now: if you want to simulate film and if you are willing to adapt your workflow to this right from the beginning, then Dehancer is for you.

If you want to just add some “film like” presets and work as fast as possible, in batch, and call it a day, then Dehancer is probably not the right tool.

Although it features pre-made presets, Dehancer is not something you mindlessly slap on the photos and get magic in return.

First of all, you need to prepare the raw files for Dehancer. This means editing them so that they all have a close enough contrast and white balance. When you look at their thumbnails in your software of choice, they should look uniform.

Dehancer’s website has a page (https://www.dehancer.com/learn/article/recommended-raw-development-settings) that suggests the following Lightroom parameters as a starting point:

Profile: Adobe Standard

Exposure: –1

Contrast: –40

Blacks: +60

Curve: Linear

Sharpening = 0

Noise Reduction = 0

Color Space: sRGB IEC61966-2.1

Bit Depth: 16 bit

They are not final one-fits-all parameters, but you will get a sense of what they want you to accomplish and you can then adapt the parameters to different photoshoots.

Digital images are usually having lots of contrast baked in, and you want to lower it to the point where the image is still having some but not too much. You are not aiming to a log-like look, but you want to get rid of deep blacks and extreme contrast.

It’s also crucial to make sure the image is in sRGB when you open it in Photoshop / Affinity, because that’s the color space Dehancer works with right now. Lightroom is set to use ProPhoto as default. If you (like me) edit the image in Photoshop / Affinity from Lightroom and apply Dehancer there, you can leave Lightroom set to ProPhoto, and convert the image to sRGB right after opening it in the external software.

It is also important to bring sharpening to the minimum in the developing software. We don’t want the photos to be sharpened, and this is a big issue with digital photography. Sharpening can be fine in some situations, but it’s what often makes a digital photo look digital. So, let’s bring it down. We won’t lose any detail, we will just get rid of the artificial enhancements.

In Dehancer we have a slider called resolution, in the grain panel, and it can also help reduce the definition of details in the photo: that makes sense, since grain in film is a three-dimensional event that directly affects the details and their perception.

Lightroom has a size parameter in the grain panel, and it kinda does what the resolution slider does in Dehancer’s grain panel, though in a less sophisticated way. While Dehancer is selectively degrading the resolution of areas with an high concentration on details, Lightroom is basically blurring the image behind the grain.

If working with a series of photos, make sure the white balance is the same on each of them. For a realistic result it is often preferable to use a daylight white balance, since that is what most film was calibrated to.

To summarize, for getting good results in Dehancer you should:

• Lower the contrast of the raw file
• Bring the sharpening to 0
• Set the same white balance for all the photos of the same set, preferably daylight
• Convert the image to sRGB in the external editor

Following these steps you will produce an image that is ready to be treated by Dehancer.

From now on, it all comes to what you need to do with your images, and personal experimentation is mandatory.

Dehancer offers numerous film stock simulations, and also some interesting premade presets. You can also save your own presets.

My advice is to pick a preset you like and star experimenting with it, one panel at the time. Different panels can work against each other, offering controls that affect the same perceived values of the image, so it is important to only touch what you actually need.

Their website also has a page that gives you a full workflow idea, and I suggest to take a look at it and read their documentation, it’s quite well made and it makes any tutorial redundant: https://www.dehancer.com/learn/article/typical-photo-editing-workflow

I’d like to mention Dehancer offers some unique features, like a beautiful simulation of halation and bloom, two effects that are present in film photography, with different levels of intensity depending on the stock. Their subtle presence if often important for creating a realistic simulation, and their extreme usage can bring some very interesting results.

I usually pick up a preset that I think works with the image. I then use the push/pull slider under Films and see what can bring me optimal results.

After that I move to the right side panels. I usually ignore Source, because my raw was already optimized before opening it in Dehancer. I proceed tweaking what is needed, basically all panels except Film Damage, Overscan and Vignette.

The amount of customization and very specific parameters is a testament to the different approach Dehancer takes when compared to Lightroom presets.

Conclusion

I mentioned before that Dehancer is not a tool for jumping on the film emulation aesthetic trend.

It’s a proper instrument for trying to actually simulate film, and it requires some time and dedication for learning it. It has no batch mode so each photo must be opened and edited on its own. It really is not a “click and apply to all” preset.

But if you need or want to simulate film, there is nothing better. It works as a plugin on Lightroom, Capture One, Photoshop, Affinity and it also has an iOS app. So there are plenty of ways to integrate it into your workflow.

As I mentioned, it personally saved me in a couple of tricky situations, when clients needed film and it was impossible for me to actually shoot film. Clients were happy and satisfied with the results, as they blended perfectly with their other film sets. This alone makes Dehancer a valuable addition to my professional equipment. 

I am also enjoying using it for my personal works, where I can experiment more — I love using Adox Color Implosion and mix it with LAB curves, for instance.

Talking of mixing, I also want to point out that Dehancer is not necessarily a finalized act in our workflow. On the contrary. I often like to work on its output, with LAB curves and also with other techniques. Sometimes I like Dehancer’s output and I just would like to add some localized brightness or color intensity, and I can easily do in Affinity or Photoshop with some brush work.

I believe first and foremost we have to imagine our destination. In our digital photography era, we play with infinitely malleable material. Our photographs can become everything and even just working at values / colors / grain can drastically alter them. There is the risk of wasting time in permutations and end up with something that is not at all what we envisioned.

My advice is to visualize where you want to go with your photography. Start visualizing that in your mind right when you are shooting, and keep it in mind later when you start editing.

Do that and digital tools like Dehancer and Photoshop become a way to achieve your vision, instead of some lottery we play, hoping to get the cool prize.

Dehancer opens the door to something more than a film look. Its documentation and unique approach are leading the curious mind to discover a new way of editing photography. New questions appear and demand answers. Curiosity is what keeps photography alive and helps us build our own paths.

A photographer that doesn’t enjoy to think and doesn’t feel fun experimenting, is a photographer that is missing a lot. So let’s be curious, let’s experiment with new tools and ideas, and most important: let’s have fun! 

EDIT 30th September 2024:

The folks at Dehancer found my article and liked it enough to propose a 10% discount to my readers.

By using the ANDREA10 code you will get the discount on every product they make (except the iOS app). That’s quite awesome and I am glad they wanted. to do this!

I want to stress out I am a professional photographer, not an influencer, and I actually do use Dehancer in my work and personal projects. This post is not a promotional piece, and I hope that was apparent when reading it.

When you use the discount ANDREA10, you get 10% discount and I also get a small percentage: I will donate it entirely to my Ukrainian friends, so keep in mind that by buying Dehancer you are not only saving money, but also doing something good for others. Thank you!