Negative Lab Pro: How to Convert Film Negatives, Step by Step

Negative Lab Pro (NLP) is a plugin by Nate Johnson that runs inside Adobe Lightroom Classic, or the old standalone Lightroom 6.14, on Mac or Windows. It is not a standalone app: Lightroom Classic has to be installed before you run the NLP installer. The current version is v3.1.1, sold for $99 on the official site (October 2026).

It does more than flip the colors. NLP analyzes each frame, or since v3 the whole roll, to set color balance and tone, then gives you film-style controls: lab scanner color models such as Frontier and Noritsu, tone profiles, automatic white balance and LUTs. The edits stay non-destructive on the original raw file, so you can reopen a conversion and keep editing it later.

It reads raw files from a digital camera, raw DNGs from VueScan or SilverFast, and TIFF scans from scanner software such as Epson Scan. It does not run in Capture One or Photoshop: in a 2020 interview the developer said Capture One's plugin environment was not advanced enough, and that Photoshop has a good plugin environment but is not a raw processor.

Older reviews describe earlier versions. Version 3 (2023) added roll analysis, presets and undo/redo and raised the trial from 12 to 24 conversions. Version 3.1 added a Positive mode for slide film, an Edit Only mode, Match (the old Sync Scene feature) and native Apple Silicon support.

The plugin is one piece of a setup. You need Lightroom Classic, a way to digitize the negatives and, for camera scanning, a light, a film holder and a stand. NLP itself works with any scanning route, so moving from a flatbed to a camera later does not mean buying anything else from NLP.

Lightroom Classic is sold by subscription. Adobe's 1TB Photography plan, with Lightroom Classic, Lightroom and Photoshop, costs $19.99 a month according to Life After Photoshop's August 2026 summary, about $240 a year ($19.99 x 12 = $239.88). Sources disagree on whether the cheaper $11.99 Lightroom plan includes Lightroom Classic, so check Adobe's plan page before choosing it.

Adding up one budget route from the prices below gives $232.95 one-time: $99 NLP + $44.95 CineStill CS-Lite + $89 Negative Supply Basic Film Carrier 35 MK2. That assumes you already own a digital camera, a macro lens and a tripod or copy stand, and it comes on top of the Adobe plan. For raw DNGs from a film scanner, VueScan Professional, the edition that saves raw files, lists at $199.95 one-time or $79.95 a year. A flatbed such as the Epson V600 can feed NLP with TIFFs from its own Epson Scan software.

NLP accepts three kinds of files, and each needs different settings before conversion. Its own guide lists raw capture, faster capture times and sharpness it says rivals $10,000+ drum scanners as the upsides of camera scanning; treat the sharpness line as the vendor's claim. The catch is dust: a camera has no infrared channel, so there is no IR dust removal, and you have to keep the film clean instead.

For specific scanner picks, see our best film scanners guide. For the full camera versus flatbed setup, see how to scan film at home.

Install Lightroom Classic first, then download NLP from the official site and run the installer. Until you buy, it runs as the free trial: the full program with no watermarks, limited to 24 conversions. On Windows, leave the hotkey helper running at the end of the install, because the Ctrl+Alt+N shortcut (English-language Lightroom) only works while it runs.

After buying, activate it in Lightroom under File > Plug-in Manager: paste the license from your receipt email into the field beside the key symbol and hit Activate. One license covers up to 2 computers you own; to move it, deactivate it in the Plug-in Manager first.

Lost the key? For v3 licenses, go to Lemon Squeezy's order lookup and enter the exact email you bought with; it sends a magic link to your order with the download and license number. Keys for v2.4.2 and older came from Gumroad, in an email with the subject 'You got Negative Lab Pro for Lightroom'.

A license covers every update within its major version (a v3 key covers v3.1 and v3.2) plus any major update released within 6 months of purchase. When v3 launched in 2023, buyers from after October 1, 2022 upgraded free and earlier v2 owners paid $49. Students and educators can ask for a discount by emailing proof such as an ID.

Out of the box, NLP uses the Lab - Standard tone profile and AutoNeutral white balance with everything else zeroed. Color model, pre-saturation and Border Buffer feed the conversion itself, so changing one means unconverting and reconverting. The guide treats the tone profile as the first step after conversion.

HP5 Plus

For black and white negatives such as Ilford HP5 Plus, skip the white balance step and set Color Model to B+W when you open NLP, which the guide calls the most important step. Start from the Linear + Gamma tone profile, which uses the same gamma curve as black and white photo paper, then adjust brightness and contrast.

If a black and white conversion still shows a tint, check that B+W was selected, then hit Reset above the tone section. Any color toning saved in your default settings gets applied even to black and white frames.

Since v3.1, NLP also handles positives. The Positive image type is meant for slide film such as Kodak Ektachrome E100, and Edit Only skips the analysis so you can edit digital shots, slides or negatives you converted earlier.

Do the color work inside NLP, then finish in Lightroom. NLP's Lightroom tips recommend these tools on a converted raw negative: cropping, Spot Removal (Q) for small dust spots, lens correction, Guided Upright to square up camera scans, the Texture slider and graduated filters, which the guide uses to cancel out a light leak on the original negative.

Two tools need care. The HSL panel works if you use its picker and drag on the image instead of moving the sliders, because you are still selecting colors in the original negative. Lightroom's main tone and color sliders don't behave as expected on a raw negative, so for those make a positive copy: select the frames, then right-click > Export > NLP - Positive TIFF Copy.

Choose the copy's color space by where it is going: sRGB for the web, AdobeRGB for print, ProPhotoRGB if you will keep editing in Lightroom. If your camera scanning setup uses a lens adapter, set lens correction by hand, since the adapter usually stops the camera recording the lens data Lightroom needs.

Scans from a lab come back as positive files, so you don't need NLP's conversion. Shoot It With Film names three tools for fixing a scan's color: Lightroom's white balance slider, moved opposite the color cast; the HSL panel, which can tame a single color, such as desaturating only the greens; and Photoshop's Selective Color adjustment layer for subtle color and contrast nudges.

Analog Cafe's editing guide notes that lab and home scans often benefit from color correction, cast removal and contrast tweaks, and it aims to enhance the film's own look without sacrificing fidelity. NLP's Edit Only mode (v3.1) also works on positive scans if you prefer its controls.

Shoot It With Film's John Adams III points out that labs usually do a great job but sometimes miss on color, since they weren't there when you shot. If yours misses on most rolls, compare other mail-in film labs.

These slips come up repeatedly in NLP's own guides and announcements:

• Hitting Apply instead of Convert. On older versions it burned trial uses on unconverted frames; v3 grays Apply out until conversion.
• White balancing a TIFF. The film-border white balance is for raw files only; on a TIFF it creates color casts, and sampling the film mask with the color picker adds strong blue saturation.
• Leaving scanner color correction on. For TIFFs, turn off every color adjustment in the scanning software and scan as a positive.
• Using Lightroom's Reset or Sync on converted files. Reset breaks the conversion and Lightroom's Sync skips the metadata NLP needs; unconvert inside NLP and reconvert, and copy edits with NLP's Sync Settings or Match.
• Letting the camera auto-expose each frame. Lock one manual exposure for the roll to cut variance.
• Leaving the holder or bare light in the frame. Crop it out or raise Border Buffer so it stays out of the analysis.
• Saving VueScan DNGs as 64 bit RGBI. Lightroom can't read the 16-bit IR channel; use 48 bit RGB.
• Mixing converted and unconverted frames in one batch. Select frames in the same state.
• Pushing Lightroom's main sliders on the raw negative. Edit inside NLP or make a positive copy first.
• Changing pre-saturation early. Leave it at 3 and revisit it only after every other edit.

Find what you are seeing in the table. The fixes come from NLP's image-issues, troubleshooting and installation pages.

The editorial reviews cited here are positive. Casual Photophile's 2020 review concluded, "I think NLP provides great value for the quality of results that can be achieved." Fstoppers' James Madison wrote that NLP made lab-like conversions at home easy and called the difference from VueScan night and day.

Two catches come up. NLP only runs inside Lightroom Classic, so the Adobe subscription sits on top of the $99. Results can also be uneven: a Lightroom Queen forum user found one NLP conversion washed out in saturation, and an Fstoppers commenter argued that with enough patience you can get the same look without paying for NLP. The 24-conversion trial lets you judge it on your own negatives before paying.

If you don't want Lightroom at all, darktable is a free, open source (GPL 3.0) raw developer whose negadoctor module processes scanned negatives, and an April 2026 Talk Photography post notes the latest Capture One includes a negative conversion tool. FilmLab, compared below, is a paid standalone option.