I am touching the presets mostly to get a feeling what’s hidden inside the rawfile.
To get a feel of possibility’s.
In reality al those old film emulations are for people who like to simulate a certain film in one click, but if you look past that you can learn how to use settings from those presets. Look at the sliders positions look which tools are active.
And then take out the things your like and make your own (partial) preset.
Inside Filmpack you find more controls who give you much more control over highlight details and shadow details.
I use the advanged contrast sliders alot in combination with selective sliders.
The luminance masking tool is a bonus.
And some creative tools like miniature and creative lens softning and more are a bonus which complete dxopl elite.
It’s a money pain for one’s but your not need to buy every year, you can update plv7 to 8 and stay on the same FP for years until they put something in you really like.
As B&W goes, FP ánd Silvereffex are both very nice.
I played with B&W on image’s i made in the winter on the dutch coast near Schoorl and silvereffex did helped me out more in his presets.
FP’s preset’s are overwelming at first like a cookiedraw filled to the top with all kinds of cookies so you need the hole week to decide which is your favorite cookie.
Start to learn how DxOPL works and after awile select some images you are struggling with place a copy in a folder.
Then take a trail of FP and concentrate on those you selected.
Then you can decide if FP is worth to buy on your one.
Regards
Peter
Edit some links