Film

Film simulates how different stocks reproduce colors and change the tonality of the image – rolling off highlights smoothly and emphasizing some colors over others.

The stocks are grouped as Motion Picture, Modern Negative, Classic Cinema, Classic Negative, Slide, Instant, B&W and Lab. Lab films are stylized looks rather than any real film.

Sync grain sets the grain to each film’s speed as you pick it. Sync print gives each film its own print – cinema print for motion picture stocks, paper for photo negatives, and so on. It only acts on Normalized sources, to avoid adding excessive contrast; turn it off to compare films against the same print. Instant films are the exception – they get their own print on every photo. Its starting position comes from Auto print profile in Settings.

Strength fades the simulation back toward the original photo.

Effects

Effects simulate how darkroom techniques change film behaviour.

Push simulates under- or overexposing film and then over- or underdeveloping it in the darkroom.

Skip Bleach is bleach bypass: the lab leaves the silver in, so a layer of black and white sits on top of the color. Contrast goes up, highlights blow, saturation drops.

Slide films get Cross Process instead: positive film developed in the wrong chemistry. It’s not the stylized teal and orange look you’re used to but a simulation – increased contrast, large color shifts, somewhat unpredictable.

Expired ages the film before it was shot. Shadows lift and turn red as the cyan dye fades first, blacks lose depth and midtone contrast flattens. Black and white stocks just fog and lose contrast.

Tone

In tone you can adjust how the film applies its tone curve.

Micro Contrast brightens the exposure – useful for dense stocks that roll off highlights early and might seem dim in some scenes.

Film Shoulder moves where the highlight roll-off starts. Mid grey doesn’t move, only the highlights.

Film Floor moves the point where the film receives enough light to be exposed. Useful when a lot of the histogram is near black.

Use both with restraint – they can break the photo, just like a negative would break when stretched too far.

Color

Color Temperature works like the one in Edit, with one difference: there it adjusts the source image, here it changes how the film responds to the light. Each emulsion layer has its own sensitivity, so film shifts color differently than a digital sensor would.

Color Density darkens colors as they saturate – dense color is darker color on film. Chroma decides how much color comes with that darkening: full is the normal dye response, zero darkens without adding color.

On black and white stocks those two become Color Filter, the colored glass over the lens. Yellow and orange darken a sky, red darkens it hard and lightens skin, green lightens foliage, blue does the reverse.

Inner Glow is a warm darkening across the whole frame. The brightest tones get a plain darkening with no cast, and because it feeds the film curve it reads as density rather than a tint on top.