Why Film Presets Look Great on the Demo Photos and Fall Apart on Yours

Adobe Standard Fuji Pro 400H

All images shown use only the Lumenary profiles and, in some cases, minimal tweaks from the included toolkit. Nothing else was changed. What you see is the character of the profile itself.

The look you love is only half film

I've shot more than 400 rolls of film. I love what it does with color: skin stays warm and natural, greens look dense and organic instead of digital and neon.

But at today's prices, film is a luxury, about $30 a roll including the lab. So like most photographers, I shoot digital for most of my work, and for years I tried to close the gap in post.

Here is what took me too long to understand. The look I was chasing was never created by editing. It comes from two physical things: the film stock's color response, and the lab scanner that converted the negative. Almost every film scan you've loved came off an industrial lab machine, usually a Fujifilm Frontier, corrected by an operator sitting at it.

That is the line between a preset and a profile. A preset measures neither of those two things; a profile is built from measuring both.

A preset, technically, is a set of saved slider positions. Someone edited their photo, in their light, and stored where the sliders ended up. Nothing in that process was measured. That is the reason the look falls apart on your photos: your light and your exposure are not the ones it was built on. Customers describe it in almost the same words I would have used: packs that “leaned in way too heavy into an overcooked look”, presets that “come off as forced and require multiple adjustments”.

If you want the real thing, someone has to measure the film and the scanner. So that is what I did.

Months of measuring, in numbers

I photographed calibrated color charts on eight real film stocks, from Kodak Portra 400 and Gold 200 to Ilford HP5+, bracketed from underexposed to overexposed, because film changes its color response with every stop of light. Everything was scanned on a Fujifilm Frontier SP-3000, the industrial lab scanner behind the look most of us associate with film photography.

Then came the part most preset makers skip, because it is slow and expensive. The chart I use carries 140 color patches, compared to the 24 patches of the classic chart. Each of those 140 measured values from the film scan was mapped onto the identical patch of a neutral digital reference, and the difference between them became a 3D color transformation, a LUT.

The first mathematical fit reached an average color deviation of Delta E below 2.2. That is very accurate, and also slightly too tight: at that precision, micro instabilities in the curves can show up as banding in smooth gradients. So the transformation is deliberately smoothed, which relaxes the final accuracy to a stable Delta E below 3.0, with clean gradients. I am telling you the less flattering number on purpose. If you are going to trust the color science, you should know where its limits are.

One more technical decision matters. The profiles are anchored to Adobe Standard, the neutral baseline Adobe builds for every camera it supports. Adobe measures each camera model in their labs and mathematically removes the sensor's own color signature. Because my profiles sit on that neutralized baseline, the same film profile behaves the same on Sony, Canon, Nikon or Fujifilm RAW files.

What that means inside Lightroom

The result is 45 profiles from those eight film stocks, and they behave differently from any preset, because they are not slider positions. You pick the film stock and the exposure level that matches how you shot the scene; every color film stock comes in two versions, one keeping the organic color shift of the lab scan, one balanced for your own grading. Your sliders stay at zero, your RAW keeps its full dynamic range, and the film's color response is applied at the end of the processing pipeline, after your adjustments. You edit the way you always edit, and the profile translates the result into film.

Adobe Standard ColorPlus 200

The second half: the lab

Almost every film scan you've loved was also corrected by a human, a lab operator adjusting density, color balance and contrast for every single frame. That step is part of the look, so it is part of the product. Analog Vision Studio V2 includes AVS Lab Tech, a free plugin for Lightroom Classic that rebuilds those operator controls as a panel next to your image: the color keys, the density key, the tone presets, calibrated to real lab units so every adjustment stays subtle and predictable instead of aggressive.

One of the first reviews described it like this: the controls are “intentional, refined, and easy to dial in”, and the profiles and the plugin “truly feel like they were designed together.” They were. The tone curves in the panel come from the same reference data as the profiles.

What this is not

I want to be precise about expectations, because that is the point of this page.

The profiles are a measured foundation, not a magic button. You will still edit: white balance, exposure, your own taste on top. They show their character best in decent light; flat, overcast scenes need more work from you, just like they do on real film. And while the profiles work in Lightroom and Adobe Camera Raw, the AVS Lab Tech plugin requires Lightroom Classic 12 or newer, because cloud Lightroom and mobile do not support plugins.

What photographers say after switching

★ 4.9 average · 140+ verified reviews

The most common review doesn't open with praise but with skepticism. All quotes are from verified purchases.

The honest math

Analog Vision Studio V2, Essential Edition, costs $99, or 89€. One time. That includes all 45 profiles, the workflow toolkit, and the AVS Lab Tech plugin.

For context, from my own spending: that is about what three rolls of film cost me to shoot and scan, including the lab. The profiles do not replace film for me, nothing does. But they ended the cycle of buying preset packs that looked right for exactly one week.

Your first session with them looks like this: pick a film stock, set the exposure level, refine one frame with the panel, then copy that correction across the whole shoot, the way a lab corrects a roll. That workflow is the actual product.

Questions photographers ask before buying

Which cameras are supported?

Any camera Adobe Camera Raw supports. The profiles sit on Adobe's normalized color space, so they behave the same on Sony, Canon, Nikon or Fujifilm files.

Do I need Lightroom Classic?

The profiles work in Lightroom Classic, Lightroom, Adobe Camera Raw and Lightroom Mobile. The AVS Lab Tech plugin is Lightroom Classic only (version 12 or newer).

What exactly is included?

45 profiles from 8 film stocks, each at three exposure levels (underexposed, metered, overexposed). The seven color film stocks come in two versions each, with the scan's native color character or balanced for neutral grading; HP5+ is the black and white film stock in one version. Every profile carries an intensity slider from 0 to 200%. Plus the workflow toolkit, including luminance-based grain presets, and the AVS Lab Tech plugin.

Will the system grow beyond this edition?

Yes. The Essential Edition is the entry point into the system: eight core film stocks, the full workflow, everything you need to learn how measured profiles change your editing. I am already working on larger editions: more film stocks, Noritsu scan profiles, a Capture One version, and ECN-2 motion picture film stocks. When they arrive, existing customers will be able to upgrade at a discount, so what you buy today stays the foundation, not a dead end.

Why hasn't anyone built film profiles this way before?

Because the process was never designed for photographers. Measuring film against calibrated charts and building LUTs from the data is how professional colorists match a look across large film productions, with budgets and color-science teams behind them. For an independent photographer, shooting charts on eight film stocks, scanning them on lab hardware and mapping 140 patches per exposure is slow and expensive. So the method mostly stayed in the film industry, and the photography community got preset packs instead. The knowledge existed; it just had not crossed over.

Do I need film experience?

No. The starting point is already film; several customers write they never shot film themselves.