on.raw.photography

Hello everyone, my name is Jochen and I started with photography at age 15. That was many years ago and of course it was analog photography. Black and white first, later color - had my own lab - first black and white - later color and i made even photos from my kodachrome slides.

I started with a Practica Camera from East Germany, switched later to Ricoh and finally landed with Nikon. Today I have as well some digital Leica's - again color and monochrom.

I am about to start with digitalising tons of negatives and Kodachromes and would like to use CP3. What is still unclear to me, is how do I get the software to download and operate on my mac? The license i paid already. but maybe its because its Easter weekend... everyone is looking for bunnies, eggs and nice photos?

My photos are ranging from Sports, to Nature and people of course.

Geographically I am jumping mostly between these three countries... Germany, Switzerland and South Africa.

Hello Jochen,

welcome aboard, and thank you for the lovely introduction.

Anyone whose path runs from a Praktica in East Germany through Ricoh and Nikon, via black and white, colour, lab work, and even prints from Kodachrome slides, is clearly in very good company here. I am very much looking forward to hearing more about your cameras, your digitising setup, and the processes you settle on as you begin working through your negatives and Kodachromes.

As for your question regarding download and license-key delivery after purchase: that had in fact already been taken care of just a couple of hours after your post. Since this happened on Good Friday, right before Easter, which is a public holiday here in Germany, a slight delay was perhaps not entirely surprising.

That said, the current procedure is in fact stated on the purchase page itself:
https://www.colorperfect.com/purchase-colorperfect/

After purchase, the buyer emails me their forum handle, and I then place them into the appropriate access group, manually issue the license key, and provide the current build. Which of course means I must be awake and notice the purchase. Since I have actually been asked about this twice today, I suspect I should make that passage bold or otherwise more prominent on the page.

In any case, welcome again. I look forward to talking more about cameras and processes with you.

Best regards,
Christoph

Thanks Christophe, for the warm weclome. No worries about the easter holidays... I used them to purchase and setup... and you deserve as well some days off. all fine and download done.

I am still making slowly my way through. not yet there.

regarding digitalisation, i use a quite simple setup - due to the Kodachromes. As there is factually only one scanner that can really scan properly the different layers of Kodachrome, (which is the Nikon Coolscan 9000) I opted for Macrophotography Repro with a system provided by Negative Supply. They have a very good light source and good holders and masks for the different formats (framed slides - non-framed negatives) . And the Nikon z8 with the 60mm macro so far seems to do a good job. - I have not yet started processing the negatives or the slides... but the quality is from my first perspective a really good one.

I am sure - you have here in the forum some where the first steps already described - if you can dop me the best link here, that would be highly appreciated. My fist attempt to transform a Raw Photo into a tiff by using maketiff. ended in a very bizarre colorscheme... (looked more like dracula black and greenish) Hence, i believe i need to follow you advise to first really understand the system, before just playing with it.


Best
Jochen

Quick Update - i watched the youTube Tutorial and i realsied that i had not switched from ColorPos to perfect raw... now it looks good regading slides..

Jofae wrote: Thu Apr 09, 2026 3:26 pm Quick Update - i watched the youTube Tutorial and i realsied that i had not switched from ColorPos to perfect raw... now it looks good regading slides..

Yes PerfectRAW makes slides pretty straigt forward I suppose, actually more so than ColorPos at times.

Regarding the digitization of negative film exposure is crucuail and non obvious, see: viewtopic.php?t=983

Regarding why MakeTiff does as MakeTiff does this (albeit an ancient text) is a start: https://www.colorperfect.com/smart_clip.html?lang=en

Hi Jochen, welcome!

The quality is really excellent. I’m running some tests with the latest CP3 update, which introduces the new feature of edge detection for color negative reproduction. I’ve been doing this mainly as a beta tester to make sure there aren’t any bugs, as can sometimes happen with new updates. For now, I can confirm that, even though I haven’t tested it thoroughly, I haven’t found any bugs.
And what can I say—I took a color negative scanned with a digital camera, loaded it into Color Pos using the DC function, compared it to an old version I’d created without CP, and was impressed by the color accuracy and overall quality.

I see you’re making prints using a Nikon Z8 and the 60mm macro lens—an excellent choice. But I also see you have a Leica for color photography, so I assume you have Leica lenses as well.
I can tell you that almost all of my negatives from the 1990s to the present were shot with Leica lenses, so to reproduce them I use my Fujifilm X-Pro2 with a Summicron lens and extension tubes to achieve a 1:1 ratio. The result is a seamless transition from a Leica frame to a Leica file that doesn’t compromise the texture of my images in the slightest. Obviously, I find this solution ideal even for frames shot with Zeiss rather than Sigma because, in any case, the final step goes through a Leica lens, and if you have this kind of equipment, you know what I’m talking about. But that’s not all. There’s nothing to say about macro and autofocus lenses, which, thanks to their focusing precision and sharpness, extract every imaginable detail from the negative. But we know that digital camera reproduction makes the file a bit less textured and a bit clinical/digital (precisely because of this precision) compared to a scan done with a good scanner. Well, personally, with the high-resolution Leica lens and manual focus, from my perspective, it slightly diminishes the clinical quality of the file. The result is wonderful to me precisely because I start with a Leica frame and end up with a Leica file; it’s almost a doubled Leica effect because I already have the Leica characteristics in the frame that I’m re-photographing with a Leica lens that possesses those characteristics. In fact, in most cases, the lens is the same; first it photographed reality, and then it re-photographed the frame

I agree, it’s not really necessary to go that far, but if you have one at home, why not use it, I say.
Compared to an autofocus macro lens, my process is a bit more laborious (extension tubes and manual focusing make it a bit easier to mess up), but when I compare the results with a Fujifilm autofocus lens and my manual Leica, there’s no comparison.
In any case, with CP3, whatever happens, it’ll be a success!