on.raw.photography

Dear ColorPerfect Team,

I am a chinese photographer specializing in street and landscape photography, and share my work on Instagram and other social media platforms. I have been mainly shooting on film for nearly fifteen years.

About two years ago, I decided to move from lab-scan to home-scan, taking full control of the development and digitization process myself. Since then, scanning and particularly color mask removal have become an area of deep research for me. Over the past two years, I have experimented with nearly every major and niche approach — including using Nikon 5000ed film scanners, generating FFF files with a Hasselblad X5 and processing them in FlexColor, as well as digital camera scanning with both automated and manual inversion workflows.

Despite all these efforts, I have yet to achieve a workflow that delivers truly consistent and satisfying results. At present, I still have over 350 rolls of 35mm film awaiting processing, and I’m reluctant to proceed until I can establish a reliable and repeatable workflow that ensures high-quality, consistent output.

Recently, I came across discussions about ColorPerfect 3 on Xiaohongshu and was impressed by the highly positive feedback from real users. It gave me great hope that CP3 might finally solve this long-standing challenge.

I would therefore like to apply for the ColorPerfect 3 beta program, and I’m more than willing to provide detailed feedback and suggestions during real-world use to help further improve the software. Since I use both a standard high-CRI light source and a RGB light source for digitizing, I can also provide comparative results and feedback on how ColorPerfect 3 performs under different lighting conditions.

Thank you very much for taking the time to read my application — I truly look forward to your reply.

Best regards,
Ethan Shen

Welcome, Ethan — great to have you here!

Anyone who has spent years exploring both lab scans and home scanning — from the Nikon 5000ED to the Hasselblad X5 and camera-based setups — will know just how unlikely what you’ve just found actually is.
You’ve clearly gone deep into the subject, and that level of experience will make your feedback especially interesting.

Color-mask removal and neutralization have long been the supposed bottleneck. In our view, however, they’re trivial. The real challenges are the ones that hide behind that stage — and digital cameras add another layer that has to be properly resolved. Do you still have the LS 5000ED? It’s a remarkably capable tool for the job, whereas the X5 is a very different story altogether.

It’s wonderful to hear that you’ve been following discussions on Xiaohongshu. The enthusiasm from users there has been both humbling and energizing for me — and it’s great to see that it’s reaching photographers like you who are already so deeply involved with the medium.

I’ll reach out by email soon to help get you set up for early access. In the meantime, feel free to browse the forum sections — there’s a lot of shared experience here that you’ll likely find familiar. I’m looking forward to seeing what you’ll discover with ColorPerfect 3.

Welcome, Ethan,

get ready for the big job of 350 rolls, because the time has come

From my perspective as a Color Perfect user, you can't find better.

The point is, you can't find better, not only for scans or reproductions from digital cameras, but also for native Raw files.

PerfectRAW does the best job in the world, and I challenge anyone to prove otherwise; its color—true color—and its value control tools are incredibly powerful and unique.

But color, I say, color.

On the other hand, for digital B&W, the fidelity of the hue/tone transition is like using film.

You can get a pretty good idea of ​​B&W here:

viewtopic.php?t=973

Good work.


Roberto

C.Oldendorf wrote: Thu Oct 23, 2025 8:21 pm Welcome, Ethan — great to have you here!

Anyone who has spent years exploring both lab scans and home scanning — from the Nikon 5000ED to the Hasselblad X5 and camera-based setups — will know just how unlikely what you’ve just found actually is.
You’ve clearly gone deep into the subject, and that level of experience will make your feedback especially interesting.

Color-mask removal and neutralization have long been the supposed bottleneck. In our view, however, they’re trivial. The real challenges are the ones that hide behind that stage — and digital cameras add another layer that has to be properly resolved. Do you still have the LS 5000ED? It’s a remarkably capable tool for the job, whereas the X5 is a very different story altogether.

It’s wonderful to hear that you’ve been following discussions on Xiaohongshu. The enthusiasm from users there has been both humbling and energizing for me — and it’s great to see that it’s reaching photographers like you who are already so deeply involved with the medium.

I’ll reach out by email soon to help get you set up for early access. In the meantime, feel free to browse the forum sections — there’s a lot of shared experience here that you’ll likely find familiar. I’m looking forward to seeing what you’ll discover with ColorPerfect 3.

Thank you Christoph!

I just went through the whole "help message" for all the functions in CP3, and found it very powerful. It might take some time to fully understand each of the functions and fully dive into it.


| Do you still have the LS 5000ED? It’s a remarkably capable tool for the job

Unfortunately no, and back then I didn't know about the "raw scan" and just let the software ran with the default "negative mode". So no raw scan left either for me to test around, unfortunately : (

robyferrero wrote: Sun Oct 26, 2025 5:46 pm Welcome, Ethan,

get ready for the big job of 350 rolls, because the time has come

From my perspective as a Color Perfect user, you can't find better.

The point is, you can't find better, not only for scans or reproductions from digital cameras, but also for native Raw files.

PerfectRAW does the best job in the world, and I challenge anyone to prove otherwise; its color—true color—and its value control tools are incredibly powerful and unique.

But color, I say, color.

On the other hand, for digital B&W, the fidelity of the hue/tone transition is like using film.

You can get a pretty good idea of ​​B&W here:

viewtopic.php?t=973

Good work.


Roberto

Thank you Roberto!

Yes, I have tried with CP3 for couple of my previous DC scans, it turns out, the out-of-the-box results are already fantastic.
Still digging into it, but with these functions dedicated for film scans I can foresee it will be a pleasant journey towards film editing.


Ethan