I went into Lightroom to do some quick touch-ups and decided to give the new presets a try. I'm selling one of my cameras and just tossed it on the table in the conference room at my office to snap some shots since the light was decent. From the subtle adjustments to contrast and saturation to the included 35mm and medium format grain tweaks, each one of these film stocks shines in digital form. I feel a little silly gushing over presets, but the fact is that Kirk has put crazy amounts of time that I don't even want to think about, into making these as realistic and accurate as possible, and it shows. Editing is not a process with individual parts everything you do is connected to some degree, so finding a way to balance all of those tools to get you to a single unified look without compromising in some areas is quite an achievement. But the point is the images are damn close. The new Portra Pushed presets continue that legacy of subtlety and accuracy, doing an excellent job of giving you that slightly over-processed effect, without ending up look like you set all of your Lightroom sliders to Glad you brought that up! Check out some comparisons below between actual film scans and digital files edited with the Mastin presets and guess which is which. What that means is they tend to be extremely close to the film stocks they're emulating, and they don't go overboard with crazy fade effects or wild levels of saturation and contrast. I love Mastin Labs presets because they're originally designed for hybrid shooters who work with both film and digital, to get as close a match between their film shots and their digital files as possible. It's a technique that film shooters have been using for decades, and it's a look that a lot of popular film presets are using as a starting point before going way over the deep end. This typically results in a more contrasty image with more, and sometimes some funky, oversaturating of colors among other things. Push processing film is the practice of "overdeveloping" less sensitive film to increase the exposure. Here are some samples where I've used the Mastin Labs presets.Check it out my review of the pack after the jump. Never the less, they do produce wonderful results, and are well worth taking a look at.
![ektar mastin labs ektar mastin labs](https://files.helpdocs.io/dh6s5am37z/other/1607458552300/share-image-support.png)
![ektar mastin labs ektar mastin labs](https://cdn.fstoppers.com/styles/full/s3/media/2019/04/10/fstoppers_mastin_labs_kodak_everyday_capture_one_jordan_bush_photography_new_orleans_1.png)
I also use VSCO profiles, which are more numerous, but I don't think are quite as excellent as the Mastin Labs ones.
![ektar mastin labs ektar mastin labs](https://www.thephoblographer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Screenshot-498.png)
#EKTAR MASTIN LABS SERIES#
It's very useful to get a consistent look, say to a shoot or series of shoots, or to invoke a film like nostalgia or effect.Īll of this is doable without the presets of course - they just save you time, and have all of the hard work done for you. You get straight to a more film like version of your image, which you can keep as is, or modify from there. Workflow is: open RAW file, adjust verticals, lens corrections etc, apply Mastin profile of choice, choose any desired options for Shadow Hard/Soft, Highlights Hard/Soft, Grain MF/35mm/Off, then adjust exposure and WB to taste. The idea is to generate the look and feel of the original film, from your RAW file, with the minimal amount of tweaking.
#EKTAR MASTIN LABS ISO#
They come in packs, Fuji Original, Fuji Pushed, Kodak Everyday, Ilford, Portra Original and Portra Pushed - with each pack representing the film mentioned, usually at a number of different ISO speeds. Kirk Mastin has taken a lot of trouble to shoot various film types, and then reproduce their look as a film preset which can be applied during RAW conversion in both LR and PS.
![ektar mastin labs ektar mastin labs](https://i.pinimg.com/280x280_RS/66/00/a5/6600a5a1e3ae7167bb68dc603177cc82.jpg)
There are a couple of companies doing LR/PS 'film' presets - of which I think Mastin Labs are the best.