Lab

A film lab did more than develop what the camera shot. It could push a roll that was rated fast, pull one that was overexposed, leave silver in a print for a harder look, or run a stock through the wrong developer on purpose. Each of those treatments shifts the color layers unequally, and a good share of the looks associated with the photochemical era came from them. The Lab tab holds those choices. It is not a render stage of its own. Its controls act inside the Negative and Print stages, and the plugin applies Process to the printed image.

What the tab does

The Lab tab’s single group is titled Film Processing. Two of its controls act in the Negative stage, on the exposure before and the density after the stock’s response is applied: Push/Pull and Layer Color Coupling. The Process menu acts in the Print stage, on the printed image, before Matte Shadows and the final encode. The Overview diagram shows the Lab folding into both.

Because Lab is not a stage, its Enable switch does not remove a step from the chain. It neutralizes every Lab setting inside Negative and Print at once, which makes it a quick way to compare a look with and without its lab treatment. Silver Halide Mode stays as you set it on the Grain tab.

Push/Pull

Push/Pull (stops) sets the development offset, negative for pull and positive for push. It reshapes the negative’s density the way a change in developer time would. A push raises the mids and shoulder, steepens contrast, and adds a slight warmth through the mids. A pull rolls the highlights down, flattens contrast, and cools. The color shift is mild overall, and the change concentrates in the mids and highlights. Its influence fades into the deep toe, though dark values can still shift a little in brightness and color.

A push here does not change exposure. On set, a push was paired with underexposure to land the lab’s aim density, and a pull with overexposure. To reproduce that, move Exposure on the Adjustments group in the opposite direction to the push. Leave Exposure alone and you get the harder, brighter push of a roll that was developed long at its normal rating.

Grain does not follow this control. A pushed negative on real film is a grainier one. Here the Grain tab has its own amount. Raise Emulsion Intensity when a push should look pushed.

Layer Color Coupling

Layer Color Coupling adjusts how the negative’s color layers influence each other, shaping color separation. The Negative rendering already includes the stock’s native coupling, and the midpoint leaves it unchanged. Lower the control and the layers couple less, so color collapses toward neutral. Raise it and separation is over-driven. Grays are pinned by construction. This changes saturation, not contrast. Lowering Negative Intensity also reduces the coupling change, though the result depends on the stock and the exposure.

Process

Process selects a photochemical treatment for the print.

CCE (Bleach Starve) models the weakened-bleach route to silver retention. It adds silver density in the shadows and leaves the highlights nearly untouched, with a saturation loss that follows the density. Its amount is capped at a fixed retention.

ENR (Silver Redev) is redevelopment after a full bleach, so the silver comes back more evenly across everything that developed. It reaches heavier than CCE and desaturates more broadly.

ACE (Mid-Preserve Redev) is the plugin’s third redevelopment shape rather than a named lab process. It concentrates its darkening and color loss in the deepest shadows and leaves the mids closer to normal. The Film Look menu’s Cold Chrome recipe uses it.

Cross-process (C41) is the odd one out. It is not silver retention. It applies the contrast curve of a stock run through the wrong developer, with lifted deep shadows and a teal-to-yellow drift from shadow to highlight. Real cross-processing wanders unpredictably from lab to lab, so this is one plausible version of it. If the look also needs less color, use Saturation in the Adjustments group.

The first time you pick CCE, ENR, or ACE, the plugin switches the Grain tab’s Silver Halide Mode on, because a print with silver left in it has silver grain. It does this once. Switch it off again if you want dye grain, and the plugin will not force it back. Cross-process does not trigger it, since a cross-processed image is a dye image.

Process Amount and Crossover

Process Amount sets the strength of the silver-retention process you picked, from off to the process’s canonical strength. It is hidden while Process is set to Cross-process, because that process has one control of its own.

Crossover appears only for Cross-process. It sets how far the shadows drift teal and the highlights yellow, independent of the contrast, from none through strong to extreme.

Controls

Working with the Lab tab

Set the stocks first. A process reads differently on each print stock, and a push reads differently on each negative, so pick the Negative and Print stocks before you decide how the lab treated them.

Judge Process on a frame with real shadow detail. The silver-retention variants differ mostly in where they put the silver, and that only shows where there are shadows to plug. Their differences are easiest to judge where the frame still has shadow detail.

Use Enable as the A/B. It toggles the whole tab’s contribution inside Negative and Print, which is the cleanest way to see what the lab is adding without touching each control.

What the Lab tab cannot do

Process is a print treatment. Bleach bypass on a camera negative desaturates with the opposite polarity, and there is no negative-side variant here. The Film Look recipes that read as negative bypass are built from a print process plus the other tabs.

Push/Pull does not add grain and does not shift exposure, as above. Both are controls of their own on other tabs.

Flashing, the low-level pre-exposure some looks use to open shadows, is not a control on this tab. The Combat Silver Film Look uses it, and the tab does not expose a flashing control.

Two controls are built into the plugin but hidden in this release. Super-White Rolloff is a highlight shoulder for linear and HDR sources. It is off by default and does nothing until it returns as a visible slider in a later update. Print Split Tone on the Print tab is hidden the same way. Layer Color Coupling, the interlayer control, is visible now.