DxO FilmPack 7 vs Dehancer Film

Which one of these film emulation plugins is the most suitable for a photographer who was trained on film, but now shoots exclusively in digital? In DxO FilmPack 7 vs Dehancer Film I go in depth into the two leading packages in the emulation space.

Disclaimer

I am affiliated with both DxO and Dehancer. Meaning that if you buy through the links on this page, it will cost you no more but I will get a some recognition which contributes to the cost of creating the content on this website.

I can offer a 10% discount on Dehancer only – just use the code CHRISW when you checkout.

Try or Buy Dehancer Film – use the code CHRISW at checkout to activate 10% discount if you are buying.

Try or Buy DxO FilmPack 7 – no code required as no discount is available..

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DxO FilmPack 7 vs Dehancer Film

These two film emulation packages are as different as chalk and cheese. Both excellent in their own way, but targeted I think at different, albeit overlapping, user groups.

If I had to summarise the difference in a single soundbite I’d say FilmPack 7 sits in a continuum between Instagram Filters and serious film emulation. Dehancer is all about serious film emulation. Both have the fundamental “pick from a list of filters” functionality but whereas Dehancer embraces the processes of analogue film processing in its customisation screens, FilmPack 7 embraces modern editing technology.

This may be a superfluous observation but FilmPack 7’s Encarta like approach to education leaves me impressed but uninvolved. Dehancer on the other hand had me scrambling for the manual several times to look up the analogue processes I found in the customise screen. The result was that I retained the information that Dehancer offered. And by the way the Dehancer feature list found here is an education in itself.

The Subtractive CMY Color Head works like the colour correction filters used in photo enlargers and RGB printer lights. Dehancer uses the real-life values of the filters.

Dehancer Feature list

Let’s get into the detail..

Installation

DxO FilmPack 7

A no brainer. Automatically installs plugin to Lightroom and PhotoLab. Will prompt for licence key.

Dehancer Film

A little more complicated, the binaries have to be installed, then the licence needs to be activated before film profiles can be downloaded.

User Interface

The two programs have very similar interfaces. Dehancer is much more oriented towards traditional film development and printing processes whereas the controls in FilmPack mirror to an extent the controls in any other image processing package.

The controls in Dehancer emulate processes that exist only in analogue film processing. And it does this in both depth and detail.

FilmPack controls include all the well known adjustments around exposure, contrast and color with luminosity masks and a nod to film technology in the grouping of controls into Film, Development, Graphical Effects and Lens Effects.

This gives FilmPack a much easier and shorter learning curve, anyone who has used either PhotoLab or Lightroom will be able to use it straight away.

FilmPack also contains Time Machine, a feature that is strongly reminiscent of Microsoft’s Encarta if anyone is old enough to remember that. Basically it’s an encyclopaedia of film, linking each historical item to renderings available as presets. It’s an unusual feature that is both informative and fascinating.

Dehancer on the other hand sticks much closer to Film technology and although this means a steeper learning curve for those not brought up on film, it also gives the user a lot more control over the film emulation process. We will look at these controls in detail later.

DxO FilmPack 7

Viewing area on the left and film stock (285 in total) on the right. Histogram underneath thumbnail.

Minimalist control bar along the top of the screen controlling Saving, Comparison, Zoom level and Modification (cropping, rotation, horizon levelling). Three buttons at top right control the visibility of screen elements – Full Screen – Navigator – Histogram.

A pair of buttons underneath the histogram allow the user to toggle between Preset and Customize views.

In Customise view we have access to editing controls in four groups

Film

Development

Development contains many of the controls we are familiar with from PhotoLab presented in sections beginning with

Light

These controls affect light globally (Exposure) and in tonal values (Highlights, Midtones, Shadows and Blacks). There is some overlap in the range of tonal values and it may be that the tone curve gives slightly more control.

Luminosity Masks

Luminosity Masks are a powerful way of making local changes with selections based on luminosity or brightness. Once the mask is made, the available controls applying to the masked areas only include White Balance (seen in the image above), Contrast and Light.

Contrast

These are global controls, applied to the whole image – although there are controls for Highlights, Midtones and Shadows, meaning that the effect of the Contrast sliders can be amplified or minimised in these three ranges.

White Balance

A global control affecting the warmth or otherwise of the entire image.

Channel Mixer

This is different to the way the channel mixer works in photoshop. You cannot swap channels here in the same way. Think of to rather as a glass filter as used in black and white photography.

Tone Curve

A rudimentary implementation of an RGB curve. You can adjust red, green or blue individually or altogether in a single curve adjustment. The bottom left is represents the darkest pixels and top right the lightest. The Contrast slider in almost all image processing software emulates an S-Curve, dropping the value of the darks and increasing the value of the brights, thus producing more contrast.

Graphical Effects

These graphical effects are a little bit “instagramy” for my liking, Ubiquitous in all film emulation plugins, I’m sure they have a place, but not in my work.

Lens Effects

Lens Effects contains an option for choosing a coloured filter – there is no rollover so it’s “select and see”. Also vignetting and selective blur.

Summary

There is a staggering range of presets, offering very accurate emulations of a whole raft of films, but in adopting the controls available in every modern image processor, the package is let down by a subset of controls that seem rudimentary.

The overall impression is that this is an approachable and semi flexible way to get into film emulation, but its strengths are as a preset or filter package rather than as a serious development tool.

Dehancer Film

Straightforward layout, Film stocks/profiles (more than sixty, each one containing 3 exposure variants) on the left, generous viewing area with a histogram underneath it. Editing Controls on the right.

First impression from the range of presets and the range of editing controls is that this is a serious package for film enthusiasts. To take a modish example, where FilmPack has 3 variants of Kodak Portra, 160 NC, 160VC and 400, Dehancer offers 5, 160, 160 NC, 160VC, 400 and 800. This is a labour of love!

Dehancer provides Film Profiles and Presets, both of which can be customised.

Film Profiles

There are 63 Film profiles to choose from, Dehancer’s Push/Pull or EV compensation can be applied to all of them and covers a range of four stops so a lot of fine tuning is possible even at this early stage.

Push/Pull

Built on the observation that all films behave differently depending on how much light they receive during exposure. In Dehancer film exposure is implemented with the Push/Pull (Ev) parameter. In fact there are 3 different film exposures sampled to build each film profile in Dehancer. 

As a creative tool Push/Pull allows you to vary the color-contrast look of a scene within a selected film profile.

Push/Pull can also be used in clipping control, since contrast greatly depends on film exposure. With negative films it affects overall color and contrast. With positive films Push/Pull allows you to set the desired exposure within a 4 stop range, opening blocked shadows or protecting blown-out highlights.

Presets

A Preset is different to a Film in that it represents a combination of Film Stock and Paper with other adjustments such as Halation, Bloom Color Head applied. More on these later.

There are 62 ready made presets and you can also save your own recipe as a preset. In this example, Kodak Portra 400 and KODAK PROFESSIONAL ENDURA Premier Paper. See what I mean about a labour of love?

Adjustment Parameters

Once you have chosen a Film Stock or a Preset, you can then alter various characteristics to taste, using the controls on the right hand side of the screen. These controls are built on the basis of film characteristics so it pays to know what they can be expected to do.

Source

Source corrections are intended to compensate for obvious technical issues of a source material.

Exposure Compensation 

This setting can be used to compensate for the exposure errors of the source media. This is a base correction of the original image before any Dehancer effects are applied.

Temperature Compensation

Cool or Warm the image globally – identical to the DxO tool but feels more finely calibrated.

Tint Compensation

Adjust the tint between green and magenta. These two controls (Temp and Tint) can be used to modify colour casts in combination.

Defringe 

Defringe helps to deal with the chromatic aberrations (purple or green fringes) visible at the edges, typically in areas of very high contrast.

Film Developer

The analogue approach to film development makes it possible to process film by individually configuring the formula of the developer solution and the development process.

The Dehancer Film Developer tool allows to make your own development recipe depending on the source material, shooting conditions and creative tasks.

Contrast Boost

 In analogue processes, contrast is determined by developer temperature and concentration. In Dehancer this parameter can take both positive values (contrast increases) and negative values (contrast decreases).

Gamma Correction

In film processing gamma correction controls the contrast ratio of a negative, in relation to the exposure time. In Dehancer, as in other processing products, Gamma correction controls how much the midtones are shifted towards shadows or highlights.

Color Separation

The color separation of negative film is determined by the color filters in the emulsion layers, the sensitisation of each layer and their order. In Dehancer you can emulate the ‘chemical component’ of the developer, which affects the sensitisation of the emulsion layers. 

When Color Separation value is reduced, the saturation of the most intense colors is reduced first, while medium and low saturation colors remain almost unaffected.

Color Boost

Some color development processes allow saturation to be controlled by the properties of the dyes introduced into the emulsion at the development stage. In Dehancer, this feature is implemented in the Color Boost control, which increases or decreases the overall saturation of the image (not only the most saturated colors, as with Color Separation). 

This type of color enhancement is comparatively subtle and should not lead to clipping, i.e. all colors remain inside the color gamut.

Film Compression

On a negative film, clipping in the highlights can occur much later than on a digital camera. The Film Compression tool lets you fine-tune the redistribution of the highlights. The resulting image looks more analogue and is more flexible for further manipulation with exposure, contrast, film/print profiles, etc.

Impact

 The higher the Impact value, the more the highlights are pushed towards the midtones.

White Point

As in a digital Tone Curve, The White Point parameter defines the ‘film clipping threshold’, and directly affects contrast because it determines the steepness of the transition to the clipping area. As the white point gets closer to the midtones, the more contrasty the image appears. By default, White Point = 100. This means that it stays at its initial position. 

The White Point can be lowered, thereby increasing the overall contrast of the compressed range. The minimum possible value is 50. The lower the White Point is, the more likely clipping will occur in the highlights. 

Alternatively, the white point value can be increased. In this case, the overall contrast of the compressed range is reduced. The maximum possible value is 120. The higher the White Point is, the more flat and grayed the highlights appear.

Tonal Range

This parameter represents the breadth of the tonal range affected by Film Compression tool. A minimum value = 0 means no compression. A maximum value = 100 means that the compression affects the widest range from the brightest highlights almost all the way down to the deepest shadows.

Color Density

In Analogue photography, different films reproduce color differently as they get closer to the highlights. 

Negative films tend to noticeably loose saturation in the highlights. Slides are generally more vibrant, even though the clipping occurs earlier. 

The Color Density parameter controls the color intensity of the compressed range. 

Expand

The Expand tool provides separate manual sliders for black and white points in relation to the output color mode – Normal or Luma

N.B. analogue films naturally have different black and white points. Dehancer leaves this to the user to control via the Expand tool so that the integrity of the base emulation is sound.

Print

We’ve seen the effect of these controls in the Presets. They allow the user to select a type of paper. These controls are modelled on the behaviour of printing paper.

Target White is greyed out in the image above. It is only available when Kodak 2383 Print Film or Fujifilm 3513 Print Film is selected. It allows the user to adjust the temperature of the printing light source.

Color Head

Color Head is based upon the analogue color correction tool integrated in photo enlargers. The Color sliders do exactly what you would expect them to do.

Film Grain

A control for adding and controlling film-like grain to the image. There are profiles for 8mm, 16mm, 35mm and 65mm with each one available in ISO 50, 250 or 500.

In real film, grain can be found in both the deepest shadows and the lightest highlights. But it cannot be visible on pitch black or pure white – technically there’s no detail in there. Film Grain naturally affects the black and white points, lowering visible contrast when enabled.

Halation

Halation is the distinctive film emulsion effect visible as the local red-orange halos around bright light sources, specular highlights and contrasting edges. The control offers emulation of 4 profiles with two versions apiece. Standard emulsion and film with the anti halation layer removed.

Bloom

Bloom is another analogue characteristic that has no digital equivalent. It is a diffused glow, appearing around light (ie whiter) sources in an image. The controls here allow the user to restrict or amplify the effect within the tonal range available.

Film Damage

The production of dust, hairs and scratches emulating the appearance of vintage film.

There are presets or custom settings.

Overscan

This refers to the presence of wider borders with perforations echoing the look of a roll of film.

Vignette

This does exactly the same job as the vignette controls in Lightroom and DxO PhotoLab.

Summary

It is pretty clear that Dehancer is the Photoshop or the Rolls Royce of film emulation. The care that has been taken to implement a huge variety of controls in the most film faithful way possible is breathtaking. As they say, if a job’s worth doing, it’s worth doing properly!

Conclusion

Budget

DxO FilmPack 7 costs $139 to buy a new licence, the upgrade price is $79. DxO have a 12 month release cycle and normally allow upgrades to be redeemed every two versions. ie. You could upgrade from V5 to V7 but not from v4 to V7.

Dehancer Film costs $199 for a lifetime license which entitles the holder to all future upgrades, alternatively $129 for a year, $89 for 6 months or $69 for 3 months

By my calculation this makes the cost of owning Dehancer on the limited licenses more expensive than FilmPack renewed every two years. But the lifetime license offered by Dehancer, including as it does, all future upgrades, is an absolute bargain compared to the upgrade costs on FilmPack 7.

Capability

I think Dehancer offers way more than FilmPack to the analogue enthusiast, if you’re serious about analogue emulation then the apparently endless customisation combinations available in Dehancer should satisfy the most fanatical enthusiast for years to come.

That being said, Dehancer has a much steeper learning curve whereas FilmPack 7 is basically plug ‘n’ play.

Who should buy FilmPack 7?

If you’re a PhotoLab user then there is a very real incentive to buy FilmPack – the license activates luminosity masking in PhotoLab Elite. Other than that, if you’re looking for a significant step up from Instagram filters with genuinely high quality film emulations then FilmPack represents very good value.

Who should buy Dehancer?

If you have a background in Analogue film development then you will absolutely love Dehancer. It is made by enthusiasts especially for you!

If you love the analogue look but hate the smell of chemicals, then Dehancer is for you. Though I wouldn’t be too surprised if they manage to emulate the smell too!

If you’re a Lightroom user or Photoshop, Capture One or Affinity Photo then there is a Dehancer plugin available.

Verdict

They are both very capable products, aimed at different but overlapping audiences. Personally I prefer using Dehancer. There is much more to get my teeth into and it seems better calibrated, by which I mean the sliders produce consistently smooth predictable change which is easily controlled.

Bonus Tip

Dehancer has an app that installs on iOS that neatly encapsulates most of the good stuff in Dehancer Film for the iPhone. It’s subscription based, you get a few free saves before having to subscribe. I’ve played with it and the results are very impressive!

Try or Buy

Try or Buy Dehancer Film – use the code CHRISW at checkout to activate 10% discount if you are buying.

Try or Buy DxO FilmPack 7 – no code required as no discount is available.

Further Reading

DxO FilmPack 7 Review

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