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BW LR4 Film Presets

Does anyone know where to find some BW Film presets for LR4?

Ive been using these:
34 free Black & White film presets for Lightroom | Presets Heaven
12 Black & White film emulation presets for Kodak B&W films! | Presets Heaven

These are great... and they work great in LR4.. just wondering if something might be missing when using them in LR4.

Thank you all!
I found quite interesting the Xequal B&W Toolkit "modular" approach which allow you to use separately and mix together and fine tune, to fit your taste, color mix, curve, grain, toning...either generic or simulation of classic films.
X-Equals - Click. Download. Smile.
 
M

mwgray

Guest
Hey all, I'm Michael from X-Equals, I'm the developer for all of the X-Equals preset collections, currently XeL: Black and White and the soon (next day or two) XeL: Color. Also, I am MikeyG!, who made those initial packs on Presets Heaven years ago.

The Presets Heaven packs were my first attempts at emulating film stock. While the results were good in my opinion, they had some room for improvement. Those initial packs were done by simply eyeballing samples, there was no real technique to them.

After those, I joined X-Equals and release the Cold Storage Collection for Lightroom 2. These were much more advanced, as I was actually analyzing film samples I shot, measuring color response and then trying to take the real-life measurements from my samples and shoehorn them into Lightroom. They were generally much better than the original releases, although there were a few that I was rather close to on the first try.

When Lightroom 3 came out, I started work on the XeL project, which aimed to bring both film emulation and a darkroom workflow approach to Lightroom. These presets were developed again from scratch from my previous samples, using some new analysis techniques I developed. I garnered a reasonable increase in accuracy from my samples and was finally able to add a reasonable grain simulation.

Lightroom 4 completely broke XeL: Black and White. I had to go back and redo almost half the total presets. PV2012 is so different from PV2010, and I had to go back and compensate.

Lightroom 4 will not properly render my old presets unless you change the PV to 2010, but then you lose all the benefits LR4 and PV2012 have to offer. Only XeL is properly developed for Lightroom 4 and PV 2012. There are differences in how the images are rendered, and how curves are applied, which can greatly change the final results. Those I compensated for.

Now, the big question is, do you like the results you get from the old MikeyG! releases in LR4? If you like what you are getting that is all that matters. If you want more accuracy in the emulations as who they relate to my sample rolls, then you may want to try XeL. You may prefer the old renditions still, or the new ones my be more consistent for you (in fact I will bet they will be more consistent).

XeL really offers 2 advantages, A: full PV2012 compatibility and B: a very modular approach to emulation, you can cook up your own styles by blending my emulations.

Here is the XeL: B&W sales landing page. It has plenty of info on XeL.
$24.99 – XeL:Black and White Toolkit | X-Equals - Click. Download. Smile.

There used to be a sampler for XeL:B&W, but I can't seem to locate it now. I'll check with Brandon (runs the site) and see if he still ahs it up. If so I'll get the link up here.
 
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