Reviewing Dehancer
A software plugin that enables film emulation in digital images
In this article we’ll be reviewing Dehancer, a software plugin that allows photographers and videographers to make their digital images and videos appear as though they were shot on film. My review was originally given as a You Tube video, and you can watch this by clicking on the image below. Read on for a written overview.
Just click on the image below to go to the video
To get Dehancer go to www.dehancer.com.
To get a 10% discount on the license fee use the coupon code NIGELHICKSPHOTOGRAPHY.
In reviewing Dehancer, what are we looking at?
Dehancer is a plugin that provides a whole host of digital emulations for a range of different types of films, both stills and video. It comes in a number of forms, depending firstly on whether you want to use it for stills or videos, and then for different formats within each genre. For stills photography, it is available in two forms: for Capture One and for Photoshop/Lightroom.
This review will cover its use only for stills photography, and with the Photoshop/Lightroom version.
Whichever version you’re wanting to use, to get hold of it head to www.dehancer.com, and download it from there. It’s perfectly possible to download a trial version, which works well, but all your images will be covered by the Dehancer logo. To remove that you’ll need to buy a license, again from the website.
Once you’ve bought your license, you’ll be emailed an activation key. Copy this and then paste it into the license section (under the Settings tab), and you’re all set.
Finding your way around Dehancer
To launch Dehancer, open an image in Photoshop, and then click on the Dehancer link under Photoshop’s Filter heading.
Your image will now be visible in a central window, with its exposure histogram below, stretching across the screen. Down the left side are listed all the film profiles that are available, both colour negative and positive (ie transparency/slide) films, plus black and white films. It’s quite a long list, so to cut this down at the top there is a filter option that allows you to display only colour negative, colour positive or monochrome profiles.
Film profiles:
You can skip around this list of film profiles and see how each one affects the colours, contrast, brightness and so on of your displayed image. The main film profiles I’ve used in reviewing Dehancer are Fujichrome Velvia 50 and Provia 100, as these were my go-to choice of films in the days when I shot exclusively in film. I’ve also made comparisons with Kodak Ektachrome and Kodachrome, since these were also films that I used.
Further adjustments:
Over on the right of the screen is a listing of a whole host of adjustments that can be made, starting with exposure and colour temperature compensations. So, even though you may have selected a given film profile that doesn’t mean that you’re stuck with the single emulation: it’s perfectly feasible to make changes. You are not stuck with a one-size fits all emulation for each film profile.
There’s also an Expand option for moving and setting the black and white points at either end of the image histogram, to help prevent clipping, as you would in Photoshop. There are also a number of adjustment options related to the way film is processed and even printed, including Film Developer, Film Compression, Color Head and Print options. With the last of these, you don’t actually print the image: this is simply an emulation of what the film image might look like if it were printed on any of a range of listed papers.
Roughing things up with Grain:
Next up is Film Grain, which emulates the type, size and even colour of the grain that each film would come with. This is for those photographers who really want that grainy film look. This is followed by Halation and Bloom, two effects commonly seen in film images, which I can only describe as a glow emanating from high contrast edges, for halation particularly with artificial lighting.
Finally, there is Film Damage, in which you can even add in scratches and dirt marks to really give your digital files that old, badly treated film look!
Trying out some effects
So let’s look at some of Dehancer’s effects. Firstly, just the basic film emulation, with added adjustments. The before and after image below gives you a good idea of the effect of taking an image from Photoshop (on the left) and applying a Fujichrome Velvia 50 emulation. It’s quite dramatic, the Velvia emulation being a whole lot warmer than the original image, something that is always typical of the film itself: it is quite a warm film, and produces quite stunning sunset results.
It is easy to move around the list of film profiles, making new choices at will. Comparisons with the Velvia emulation show that Fujichrome Provia 100 is a little bluer, but still attractive, while both Kodak Ektachrome and Kodachrome are significantly bluer. The latter also has a magenta colour cast, just as the film itself does, making it not attractive for landscape photography.
The real big one for me is grain. I’ve never understood why anyone would want to degrade the sharpness of their images with something that we more experienced photographers spent years dreaming of being able to rid ourselves of! We spend a lot of money on good lenses in order to produce nice clean, sharp images, so why would you then ruin it with a whole load of grain?!
So, I’m really glad that the people at Dehancer saw the sense in separating the colour effects of film emulation from the grain effects, giving one the option of whether or not to dive into the world of grainy images. The image below shows the effect of grain on an enlarged section of the above tropical sunset image.
The effect of adding in halation is interesting, very much reproducing the softening glow effect you get with images of artificial light shot with film. Again, the images below have had the Fujichrome Velvia 50 emulation applied, with and without halation.
Simple Velvia emulation is on the left, with halation applied on the right.
Black and white conversion
Dehancer has a series of black and white film emulations, so this should be quite a handy way to convert colour images to monochrome. Again using the above tropical sunset images, here is just one example of a Dehancer black and white film emulation, in this case Ilford HP5 Plus 400.
Image requirements in Dehancer
Dehancer’s own paperwork shows that it does recommend certain image formatting for optimal use in the plugin. These are that the images should be uploaded as 16-bit Tiff files, using the sRGB colour profile.
The use of 16-bit Tiff files is fine by me, and it works well, but I have an issue with the sRGB colour profile. I’m sure many photographers are quite happy using sRGB, but for me as a professional photographer supplying images to publishers and image libraries, my entire workflow is geared to the Adobe 1998 RGB profile. Swapping back and forth between the two profiles would greatly slow down my work process, so why would I use sRGB just for the sake of Dehancer? The answer is that I wouldn’t. Dehancer needs to work with images in Adobe RGB.
Fortunately, in my work reviewing Dehancer I’ve found that – despite Dehancer’s paperwork – for me at least images in Adobe RGB work just as well in the plugin as those using sRGB. So in fact, it’s probably not going to be an issue.
In conclusion
Overall, in reviewing Dehancer, I would give a qualified thumbs-up to using it. It offers very wide-ranging choices for film emulation, and separating the colour emulation side of things from grain application – making the latter an optional extra – really works for me.
The black and white film emulations may prove simply to be a handy way to conver colour images to monochrome.
While the need for film emulation is frankly rather limited in the work I do, I can certainly see its application in projects where you want to achieve a certain film-like colour balance, or to evoke the mood and reproduction of the past. I don’t think I could bring myself to add scratches and dirt marks to my images, but never say never!
The issue I’ve had with Dehancer’s recommendation to use images in the sRGB colour mode doesn’t seem to be such an issue after all, as my own tests suggest that it works just as well with those using Adobe RGB.
So, this is in general good stuff for those photographers wanting or needing to give something of a film look to their images.
Getting hold of Dehancer
To get Dehancer go to www.dehancer.com.
To get a 10% discount on the license fee use the coupon code NIGELHICKSPHOTOGRAPHY.
