Let’s get right to it. So, what is SpectraCOLOR™?

With the release of our CS Negative+ Convert Tools for Adobe CC, CineStill is excited to introduce photographers to a new innovation, focused specifically on optimizing the film digitization workflow. At the core of these FREE negative conversion tools is our SpectraCOLOR™ technology, the most color-accurate and high-fidelity technology made for film conversion. This advancement in analog color science, and the tools to come from it, finally make it possible to easily achieve true-to-film colors when capturing your film negatives with a digital camera and converting them into positives in the standard digital photography workflow.After more than 3 years in development, SpectraCOLOR™ is the next big step in closing the gap between analog beauty and digital precision. Giving you not just a “close-enough” reinterpretation, but the most accurate representation of your film to work with. This goes beyond saving time in post processing, yielding gorgeous results deserving of the medium itself. Because why would you go through all the effort of shooting on film to end up with a sub-par scan that misrepresents your vision and the true nature of the film stock you committed to shooting? Using SpectraCOLOR™-enhanced film conversion tools will ensure that you get what your film was designed for, and enjoy a simpler conversion experience.

In the early days of camera scanning, just having a consistent even light source was a big leap forward. But as digital sensors and raw processing improved — far outpacing the aging components of traditional film scanners — it became clear that something deeper was still missing: true color fidelity.

That’s where SpectraCOLOR™ comes in, taking the guess-work out of what a negative conversion should look like. This proprietary technology has been designed to precisely match the unique spectral dye-density curves of color negative print films to the RAW digital photography workflow, making scanning your film simpler, while preserving film’s natural colors and beauty. After all, printing in the darkroom never required rendering, analyzing, and reinterpreting perfectly processed negatives; just density and color correction.

Why SpectraCOLOR™ ?

Film, particularly C-41 processed color negative film, was originally designed to be printed, onto RA-4 paper in the darkroom — where the nuances of color balance and density were resolved through analog color science. When digitizing negatives through a broad-spectrum Bayer pattern, however, we’re translating that limitless analog color space into a subtractive-color digital system that interprets color very differently than the paper that print film was designed for. This often results in unnatural hues, skewed tones, and muddy color reproduction — despite the quality of the sensor or the CRI of the light source.

There is an incredible amount of high quality analog data in a film negative that exponentially increases as the size of the negative increases, and even more breathtaking quality when you consider the color fidelity and dynamic range. How do we get as much data as we can out of film, as accurately as we can? Especially if the sensors and raw processing we use in the conversion workflow today are well beyond the conventional film-scanner counterparts of yesteryear?

We realized that in order to really honor the rich color and dynamic range of film, we needed more than just brighter light—we needed better light and a better way to process it. Light that was tailored not only to the base density color of film like the CS-LITE but calibrated to the complex way that color film and digital sensors both respond to color spectrum.

CineStill is addressing this in a new way no generic light or raw processing software could. Our goal to advance the color science and accessibility of at home camera scanning began with the CS-LITE “color modes” and was further refined by the  CS-LiteBrite+ and the included Color Negative Calibration Sheet. Meanwhile, SpectraCOLOR™ was being perfected through both digital and analog media, to bridge the gap between the analog spectrum and hybrid color spaces.

SpectraCOLOR™ offers precise color separation and rendering, resulting in a high-fidelity digital representation of your film negative — right out of the camera, and negative conversion that compliments the process that print film was designed for — printing. This dramatically reduces the need for post-processing and preserves the soul of your analog capture.

Unlike available white light inversion methods, which render film as flat or muddy, SpectraCOLOR™ enhances the color spectrum to match the unique properties of color film, ensuring your scans reflect the film’s vibrant natural beauty. Through years of research and development, utilizing advanced color science and even nano-technology, SpectraCOLOR™ has been designed to produce an ultra-wide color space, precisely matching the color layers of film to the separate color channels of digital capture, finally making true-to-film scans a reality.

More Than Just Hardware

While SpectraCOLOR™ may be fundamentally recognized for it’s hardware innovation, it’s also part of a larger vision. The release of our CS Negative+ Convert Tools gives photographers a first glimpse of what this technology can do. Designed to work with the Adobe CC suite, these simple tools plug right into the presets panel with all current versions of Lightroom (including Lr Mobile for free) as well as Photoshop and Bridge with Adobe Camera Raw.

These software tools will already work with your existing camera scanning setup and can give your film negatives more true-to-film color conversions after capture, especially when paired with the CS-Lite and the new CS-LiteBrite+. Together, these tools allow for an easier, faster, and more enjoyable conversion process — while still giving you all the additional control you need in this post-digital era to make your work your own.

A Better Starting Point

Why go through all the effort of shooting on film only to end up with a scan that misrepresents the film itself? SpectraCOLOR™ ensures that the conversion of your negative is the best it can be — true to the colors you captured and the rendering of the film you chose to shoot. SpectraCOLOR™ is more than just a breakthrough in light quality — it’s a foundation for the future of film conversion.

And that future is already taking shape.

At CineStill, we’ve been building on what we introduced with our first light source, the affordable CS-LITE — rethinking what a film scanning light source could be if it was purpose-built to take full advantage of this new technology. Not just brighter, but smarter. Designed to deliver the most accurate, true-to-film color possible straight from your digital capture.

The first full implementation of SpectraCOLOR™ hardware is being finished, and it's made specifically for photographers who demand more from their scans — and their film.

We’ll be shedding more light on that very soon. Stay tuned. 

Yours in Analog,

CineStill Film