I’ve been taking photographs for a very, very long time, and for most of that time I’ve used film. I still do that quite often today. Over the years, I’ve scanned a huge number of images, mostly from negatives. To do this, I’ve used a combination of film scanners and DSLRs. In the vast majority of cases, I no longer have the RAW files from the DSLRs, as I deleted them to save disk space.
I’d really love to make use of the excellent features in DXO PhotoLab to process those old scans again – and I don’t just mean a few images, but thousands… Denoising and demosaicing in particular, but also ClearView, could give the old images a leap in quality that was previously completely unthinkable.
But this is currently being held up by two problems:
Denoising and demosaicing only work with RAW files.
I can’t export 16-bit TIFF files as DNGs to create RAW files to apply denoising and demosaicing to them.
What might a workaround look like? I’d really rather not have to scan all the negatives again with a digital camera, as that’s a very time-consuming process.
For my self I made an adapter to fit on my lens existing out off a piece of pvc 75mm, a step-up ring and a dia holder. I could make pictures of my negatives and obtained a raw file. Not much of help for you now but maybe for the future. You can buy it too.
The noise reduction in Photolab probably won’t be much use to you if you’ve photographed the negatives at low ISO. Then you won’t see any difference with the Photolab engine. And you won’t remove the typical grain pattern from old slides anyway.
There are differences in demosaicing, and Photolab’s is not bad at least with Fuji RAW, but there are better options like C1 or Iridient Developer. However, even here the differences are so minor that they only have a minimal impact on the overall result.
At one point, Topaz had a tool that converted JPG files back to RAW or DNG, but it wasn’t usable in a practical way. That’s likely why development was eventually discontinued, but it is still available for download.
The Topaz suite of tools can be effective when working with RGB images. But Topaz AI hallucinates a lot of false detail and artifacts, so great care needs to be taken.
Denoising and demosaicing only work on RAW captures. They are not meant to remove film grain or dust specs. The latter can (sometimes) be eliminated by PureRAW (and possibly PhotoLab at a later time) …but PureRAW is working with RAW files only.
has already been commented on, so I won’t comment.
Workaround?
Accept what you have
Apply to what you have the tools of apps that are made for RGB editing
Never ever delete RAW files again (some might still live in a backup???)
Other than that, 16 bit TIFF is THE format keeping the field open for editing (in other apps) - but these files are much larger than the original RAW files.
Search the forum here and the Internet for apps that promise good noise reduction…if you must. In old film, the grain is usually more prominent than anything added by a scanning setup. Moreover, the grain is (imo) one of the things that make analog photos and therefore, grain shouldn’t be eliminated. Not in one or in thousands of images. Hence. back to workaround item one.
Don’t kick your shin, live and learn (I’ve deleted RAWs in my younger (digital) years) and move on.
If you want to tame the grain on scanned negatives (or indeed slides), try negative Microcontrast. I’ve found it very effective at softening. Use with masks as necessary (e.g. only apply to areas with flat colour.