on.raw.photography

Hi everyone,

António here. I’m a film director based in Lisbon. Film occasionally shows up in my job, but for me it’s something I’m genuinely passionate about. I’ve always scanned my own negatives, at first because lab scans were draining my wallet, later because I discovered the joy (and pain) of obsessing over it.

I first tried ColorPerfect back in 2019 (CP2) and suddenly my scans started to look presentable. I used it for a long time, but when a photoshop update stopped cooperating with CP, I just switched to a fully manual process inside PS. By then I had the confidence to do it. Along the way I think I got good at it and learned a lot about scanning, color science and workflow.

When Christoph’s email about CP3 showed up, I got curious and decided to give CP2 another spin. And honestly I was reminded of how solid it is at nailing accurate colors, plus it’s way faster than my manual approach. That got me excited about bringing CP3 back into my workflow, especially now that is optimized and has new features.

I’m a scanner guy, I use an Epson V800, scan everything in linear RAW, and occasionally I scan on the Imacon Flextight at a friend’s lab when I need more detail or to make prints. Running those RAW files through CP3 sounds like the perfect next step, and I’d love to share results and learn from this community.

Would be glad to join

Best,
António

Hi António,
welcome to the forum.

I also like scans made with Imacon. I find them to be of good quality and detail.
But alas, I discovered that they aren't linear.

As you can read here:
viewtopic.php?t=956

Although linear scans are better overall, and they're also better for Color Perfect, that's not the biggest problem; they still look good with Color Perfect.

We're happy you'd like to share some results.
It would also be interesting to see your manual process on PS.

Regards

Hi António — welcome!

Great to have you with us. It’s clear you’ve got your scanning workflow well under control, and since you’ve already worked with CP2, I’m confident CP3 will slot in nicely.

Quick heads-up on my availability: I’m presently wrestling with macOS 26 UI implications for ColorPerfect. It’s slow, tedious work and means I’m posting less than usual. I’ll get in touch with you by email shortly and then set you up for ColorPerfect 3.x.

On scanner linearity (Epson / Vuescan / Imacon & Hasselblad)
Recently I’ve seen examples from Epson scanners made with Vuescan on macOS that don’t appear to be linear. That’s something we need to follow up on—I just haven’t had the time yet. Regarding the Hasselblad / Imacon points Roberto mentioned, that thread is a good starting place.
To be precise, it’s not that strict linearity is the only key. ColorPerfect has mechanisms to undo known input encodings (gamma or other tone reproduction curves). The specific challenge with Imacon/Hasselblad for color negatives is that—even after undoing such encodings—we often still don’t arrive at a faithful digital representation of the three individual negative dye densities. With many other scanners we can, and that’s also the aim with ColorNeg DC from digital-camera reproduction. Best to keep the deeper technical discussion to the linked thread.

I’m happy you’ve got access to an Imacon via your friend—very useful for comparisons. At some point we may also revisit the open black-and-white topics from that write-up.

Glad you’re here and interested—looking forward to your results!

I’d be glad to share my insights

Robert, I’ll post about my manual process once I’ve had a chance to try CP3 a bit, this way I can include some comparisons as well.

C.Oldendorf wrote: Wed Sep 24, 2025 6:25 am Epson scanners made with Vuescan on macOS that don’t appear to be linear.

At the moment I’m scanning with SilverFast, since I’ve found it produces slightly more detailed scans than VueScan, at least with my Epson V800. It also feels like an transparent path to getting a true RAW file.

C.Oldendorf wrote: Wed Sep 24, 2025 6:25 am Regarding the Hasselblad / Imacon points Roberto mentioned, that thread is a good starting place.

Yes that thread got me curious and I will definitely dig into it, since I noted that the scans in Flexcolor I got, besides the detail and being in positive mode, they're not linear. So I definitely gonna come back to this as soon as I get another scan on Imacon.