João Almeida's darktable Presets

A gorgeous set of film emulation for darktable

Pat David — November 14^th, 2016

I realize that I’m a little late to this, but photographer João Almeida has created a wonderful set of film emulation presets for darktable that he uses in his own workflow for personal and commisioned work. Even more wonderful is that he has graciously released them for everyone to use.

These film emulations started as a personal side project for João, and he adds a disclaimer to them that he did not optimize them all for each brand or model of his cameras. His end goal was for these to be as simple as possible by using a few darktable modules. He describes it best on his blog post about them:

The end goal of these presets is to be as simple as possible by using few Darktable modules, it works solely by manipulating Lab Tone Curves for color manipulation, black & white films rely heavily on Channel Mixer. Since I what I was aiming for was the color profiles of each film, other traits related with processing, lenses and others are unlikely to be implemented, this includes: grain, vignetting, light leaks, cross-processing, etc.

Some before/after samples from his blog post:

João Almeida Portra 400 sample — João Portra 400
(Click to compare to original)

João Alemida Kodachrome 64 sample — João Kodachrome 64
(Click to compare to original)

João Alemida Velvia 50 sample — João Velvia 50
(Click to compare to original)

You can read more on João’s website and you can see many more images on Flickr with the #t3mujinpack tag. The full list of film emulations included with his pack:

AGFA APX 25, 100
Fuji Astia 100F
Fuji Neopan 1600, Acros 100
Fuji Pro 160C, 400H, 800Z
Fuji Provia 100F, 400F, 400X
Fuji Sensia 100
Fuji Superia 100, 200, 400, 800, 1600, HG 1600
Fuji Velvia 50, 100
Ilford Delta 100, 400, 3200
Ilford FP4 125
Ilford HP5 Plus 400
Ilford XP2
Kodak Ektachrome 100 GX, VS
Kodak Ektar 100
Kodak Elite Chrome 400
Kodak Kodachrome 25, 64, 200
Kodak Portra 160 NC, VC
Kodak Portra 400 NC, UC, VC
Kodak Portra 800
Kodak T-Max 3200
Kodak Tri-X 400

If you see João around the forums stop and say hi (and maybe a thank you). Even better, if you find these useful, consider buying him a beer (donation link is on his blog post)!