I created the Color Response Curves preset packs to quietly bring film-like tonality to your digital photos. It leans on classic color-response behavior like gentle highlight rolloff, a forgiving shadow lift, and subtle per-channel shifts. The images gain a calm, filmic feel without looking overcooked, and you don't lose any of your usual controls, so you can keep editing your photos. Color response curves are designed and tested for people who prefer film emulations that support their edits and let them shine without stealing the scene.

You can either use them as Simple Curves or as Camera Profiles. This enables a clean interface so you can do the editing as you would normally do, while helping you achieve natural film-like colors without forcing you into a specific edit.

Set Two focuses on color response curves built around four well-known emulsions. Three of them lean toward a clean, natural palette, while one brings a strong, unmistakable character.

• Ektar 25 delivers natural, accurate colors with extremely fine detail. It excels in controlled light where precision matters and every texture counts. I usually pair well with fine grain and scenes with natural light and strong contrast.
• Ektar 100 usually pushes things further with brighter primaries, so I generally pair it with saturated and contrasty tones. It stays flexible in mixed lighting, making it suitable for portraits, landscapes, and general shooting where you want color depth without losing realism.
• ProImage 100 brings warm tones, soft contrast, and a reliable, everyday palette. It works well for portraits and lifestyle photography. You can push it creatively by lifting the black point and compressing the dynamic range to create softer shadows and a relaxed, filmic mood, and all this time, the colors will look very natural and high-end.
• Ektachrome is the outlier here. It has a stronger color cast, bold contrast, and richer hues that give your images a punchier slide-film look compared to the more neutral stocks above. If you want a super realistic look, keep in mind that slide film usually has a narrower dynamic range and a more pronounced color cast, so edit with these limitations in mind.

The colors from these response curves stay close to natural rendering while preserving each film’s strong, distinct personality. They produce clean, familiar palettes that feel timeless. Even without knowing anything about film stocks, people have seen these hues in prints and magazines for decades, which is why they can bring a nostalgic and timeless look to your images.

Sample Edits:

Edited with the color response curves of Kodak ProImage Push

Edited with the color response curves of Ektar 25

Edited with the color response curves of Ektrachrome

What are Color Response Curves?

Color Response Curves is a way to map out how the different color layers of film react to light, giving each film stock its unique look. I painstakingly recreated these curves from complex film emulations inside Davinci Resolve and baked them into easy-to-use Lightroom Camera profiles so you can use them to give your photos the film vibes without taking over your Lightroom sliders. So you can now fine-tune the tones in your images while retaining the nostalgic filmic hues.

It's basically like picking a film stock after you have already taken the photo, and you also have the power to influence the rest of the film properties afterwards. They're not magic, but man, they make film emulation feel like a breeze.

Learn more about COLOR RESPONSE CURVES

And if you want ot learn even more about color response curves, check out my article: https://vmoldo.com/film-colors/

In the video industry, there are already many techniques for bringing the characteristics of famous film stocks into digital workflows. But as photographers, we’re still catching up in that department. To bridge this gap, I’ve adapted DaVinci Resolve’s film emulation LUTs to Lightroom by reversing their Color Response Curves.

Using Color Response Curves, you can bring those same classic tones and color nuances into your photography editing environment while maintaining the possibility to edit your images however you see fit.

What is included?

After purchasing this set, you will receive three folders:

• The first contains camera profiles with the color response curves baked into them. This will provide a great starting point for your edits, with the characteristics of the film stock imbued in it, but will allow you to use all the Lightroom settings you might want to create your final look. Keep in mind, these will be applied first before your basic raw file edits
• The second folder holds presets that provide a quick way to apply those profiles in Lightroom from the preset menus. If you prefer browsing through the camera profiles directly in Lightroom’s menus, you don't need to install these. However, for faster previewing, I find it easier to have them as presets as well.
• The third folder contains the actual curves designed for the tone curve panel. I recommend pairing these with either the Adobe Neutral or Adobe Standard profiles for optimal results. Mixing them with Adobe Color will result in oversaturated images with way too much contrast. The main difference between using camera profiles versus curves is the order in which they get applied. These edits will be applied after the basic adjustments you made to the RAW file.

For optimal results, I recommend applying the camera profiles as early as possible in your editing process, right after you set a proper white balance for your images.

READ ME

The Color Response Curves are not a 1-click preset!

Please note that these are custom response curves saved as camera profiles, not a one-click preset. They are great building blocks that will help you create nostalgic film emulations with amazing colors, but you will still have to make basic adjustments to your RAW files to bring the best out of your photos, add grain, and create the complete look.

INSTALLATION:

Copy the .xmp files to the specific folder:

Windows: C:Users\[your username]\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\CameraRaw\Settings

macOS: User Library>Application Support>Adobe>CameraRaw> Settings

You can make as many subfolders and organize the files however you see fit, as Lightroom won't care and will load everything inside the folder

WARNING: Your Lightroom Version has to be somewhat recent. This won't work with versions of Lightroom that do not have a curve panel inside their masks.

To learn how to add any presets to Lightroom, you can follow these steps:

https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom-cc/kb/faq-install-presets-profiles.html

Purchase of these Lightroom presets and Camera profiles grants the buyer a personal, non-transferable, and non-exclusive license to use the presets. This license strictly prohibits resale, redistribution, or sharing of the presets in their original or any modified form, whether for commercial or non-commercial purposes.