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DxO FilmPack 6 review

February 13, 2022 by Life after Photoshop

DxO FilmPack 6 verdict

Platforms: Mac and PC

Features
Usability
Results
Value

Summary

FilmPack 6 is a bold and thorough attempt to simulate the look of classic analog films, with a huge amount of control over film renderings and grain, and a good selection of preset effects. Just a couple of things hold it back: first, it has no local adjustment tools, which does affect how and when you use it; second, it is pretty expensive, especially the more attractive Elite edition.

4

Pros

+ Evocative film and darkroom looks
+ Very in-depth controls
+ DxO RAW processing and lens profiles
+ Interesting background info on classic film photography
+ Standalone or plug-in use

Cons

– Not cheap, especially for superior Elite edition
– No local adjustment tools

Sections
  • What is DxO FilmPack 6?
  • FilmPack 6 key features
  • FilmPack 6 interface and design
  • Filmpack 6 results
  • DxO FilmPack 6 verdict

What is DxO FilmPack 6?

FilmPack 6 is a program that recreates the appearance and rendering of classic black and white and color films, together with popular darkroom techniques and ageing effects to give modern digital images an antique look.

The analog renderings and effects in DxO PhotoLab can do a great job of recreating classic film and darkroom looks, but it has its limitations.

It comes in two editions. The Essential edition is cheaper, but the more expensive Elite edition has roughly twice as many film renderings, three times as many Designer Presets and twice as many tools overall. It also has DxO’s new Time Machine feature for learning about the development of photography through the eras and tips for recreating that look today.

To decide between them, the best thing to do is download the 30-day trial. If you like what FilmPack 6 does, the Elite edition is almost certainly the one to go for.

DxO FilmPack 6 applies scientifically derived simulataions of classic film and analogy processes and comes in a basic Essential edition and a more advanced and preferable Elite version.

FilmPack 6 works both as a standalone program and as a plug-in for Lightroom and Photoshop. You can also use it as an external editor for Capture One, for example. It also integrates with DxO PhotoLab 5, if installed, to provide film renderings and other effects within the PhotoLab interface.

FilmPack 6 key features

If you use FilmPack 6 as a standalone program, you can use its inbuilt browser to look through your images and select the ones you want to edit. In standalone use, FilmPack will open and process RAW files using DxO’s own RAW processing engine and automatic lens corrections. If you use it as a plug-in or external editor, the ‘host’ program will do the initial processing.

In standalone mode, FilmPack 6 has a basic browser window for selecting images, and can also apply DxO’s own RAW processing and lens corrections to RAW files.

FilmPack 6 offers preset film renderings and Designer presets you can apply with a single click, but these are all built up from a set of tools and adjustments which you can examine and modify yourself – and you can create your own presets.

These tools allow a lot of control. You can choose the film you want to simulate, the amount of grain and even the film format (which affects the grain size applied). There are exposure and color controls, frames and borders, light leak effects and split toning tools. It’s also possible to apply vignette and blur effects.

The Elite edition includes a Time Machine feature that acts as a historical encylopaedia of film and cameras, and links to presets that mimic the look of specific eras.

FilmPack 6 provides just about every analog simulation tool needed to recreate the look of old emulsions and processes, but it does not include local adjustments. If your images don’t need any, you’re in luck, and FilmPack will be fine in standalone mode. However, if your images do need localised tweaks, you’ll need to do those in your ‘host’ program, with FilmPack as a plug-in or external editor to ‘finish’ the picture.

The exception is when you’re using PhotoLab and FilmPack together. You can apply local adjustments and film renderings and analog effects simultaneously – though you don’t see the regular FilmPack interface, just a series of panels and sliders in the PhotoLab interface style.

FilmPack 6 interface and design

Used as a standalone program or a plug-in, FilmPack 6 is really simple to use, with big, chunky icons (maybe even too big) and no more information than you need at any one time.

FilmPack 6 comes with a good selection of film looks and presets (there are more in the Elite edition) and drop-down filters to narrow down the choices.
You can swap from presets to manual adjustments with a button on the toolbar – now you can build your own film renderings from scratch or modify those supplied.

If you just want to browse and apply the existing presets, it could hardly be simpler. There’s even a drop-down filter menu for checking off the type of renderings you’re looking for to narrow down the selection.

Then, if you want to make your own adjustments, you click a big button on the tool toolbar to swap the presets panel for a vertical toolbar with expandable sections for each of the tools.

Each of the standard presets comes with a description in the left sidebar, and the Time Machine feature (Elite edition only) is an informative and engaging journey through the history of photography – it’s very well written and you could pass a lot of time reading it for its own sake.

Where DxO’s other software interfaces are quite densely packed and technical, FilmPack 6’s is quite the opposite.

One thing to be aware of, though, is that this is not a non-destructive editor. Even in standalone mode, you have to save images as new, processed versions – you can’t come back to them later and keep going.

Filmpack 6 results

With manual tonal and color adjustments you can tune images to deliver exactly the look you want, but if your images need local adjustments you’ll need to do these first in other software.

The results from FilmPack 6 are terrific. There’s a great choice of attractive and inspiring preset effects, though a few more probably wouldn’t hurt, and there’s a huge amount of control over every aspect of film rendering. You can even match the grain of one film with the rendering of another – probably not something a purist would do, but an indication of the permutations you can experiment with.

The film simulations are mostly excellent, but the choice of film borders is fairly modest and 35mm film does NOT have this many sprocket holes alongside a single frame. That’s a rare technical fail in FilmPack.

The lack of local adjustments does mean you can’t always exploit DxO’s processing. If you need to do some dodging and burning or other selective adjustments, you will need to do the before you open the image in FilmPack 6 – which means another RAW processor like Lightroom or Capture One will be doing the demosaicing and lens corrections, not DxO’s own processing engine. You COULD make local adjustments after using FilmPack, but it does so much heavy tonal work that you probably won’t have enough editing headroom any more.

The Time Machine feature in the Elite edition is both evocative and inspiring, but the matching presets don’t always go all the way. I needed to add vignette, texture and blur effects to get what I felt was a proper ‘Atget’ look.

Another mild disappointment is that if you find a rendering you like in the Time Machine and click on the button for suggested renderings to go with it, the result might be only half way to what you imagined. For example, I’m a great fan of Parisian photographer Eugene Atget, but while FilmPack’s matching preset is a decent approximation of the film tone, I needed to do a lot more work with the vignette, blur and texture tools to get close to what I feel is the ‘Atget’ look.

The other thing is the rendering accuracy. DxO is very proud of the work it’s done on exactly recreating the appearance of historical films, but this only makes sense if FilmPack is working directly with RAW files in standalone mode. If you use it as a plug-in or an external editor, it’s applying its rendering to images which have already been pre-rendered by another application.

DxO FilmPack 6 verdict

FilmPack 6 can reproduce the look of bygone times, but so can many rival programs – including DxO’s own Nik Collection, which offers more variety and more control.

FilmPack 6 has a lot going for it and can produce some terrific and evocative analog looks. However, it’s not the only software that can do this and, for all its technical depth, it’s not necessarily the best. The DxO Nik Collection might not have the technical accuracy but it offers a vastly wider range of styles and effects – and local adjustments too. FilmPack 6 has some great looks, but Analog Efex Pro, to name but one tool in the Nik Collection, offers way more.

Alternatively, Exposure X7, about the same price as FilmPack 6, is a far broader all-in-one cataloguing and editing tool with local adjustments and masking and a wider choice of preset effects.

FilmPack 6 is a good tool and its ambition to recreate classic analog looks is laudable. But it does have some limitations and restrictions compared to rival analog effects tools, and this makes it hard to recommend unreservedly.

DxO store and trial versions

DxO PhotoLab 8 Elite: $229.99/£209.99 (Upgrade $109.99/£99.99)
DxO ViewPoint 5: $109.99/£99.99 (Upgrade $69.99/£59.99)
DxO FilmPack 7: $139.99/£129.99 (Upgrade $79.99/£69.99)
DxO PureRAW 5: $119.99/£109.99 (Upgrade $79.99/£69.99)
DxO Nik Collection 8: $159.99/£145.99 (Upgrade $89.99/£79.99)

DxO store

Related

Filed Under: ReviewsTagged With: PhotoLab

Life after Photoshop is owned and run by photographer and journalist Rod Lawton. Rod has been a photography journalist for nearly 40 years, starting out in film (obviously) but then migrating to digital. He has worked as a freelance journalist, technique editor and channel editor, and is now Group Reviews Editor on Digital Camera World. Life after Photoshop is a personal project started in 2013.

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