Review: Totally Rad! Replichrome II (Adobe Lightroom)

When it comes to creating film emulsions in digital photography, there are loads of options out there. Many embrace a very Instagram-like ideal (VSCO) while others take a scientific approach (DxOMark.) Totally Rad!’s Replichrome II is another scientific option. This is a new batch of film renderings from their first Replichrome preset pack, and includes some of the world’s most loved film’s like EG100 and Velvia.

And when you really think about the way that the company approached the product, it only makes a lot more sense.

Pros and Cons

Pros

– Very close to the actual film renderings–not some look that Instagrammers value

– Simplistic use with lots of modifications for each film

– Adobe Lightroom integration

Cons

– We wish that there were more films included.

Tech Specs

Taken from the Replichrome II breakdown

Fujifilm films:

Features

The Replichrome II preset pack is quite literally a special pack of presets that were designed to get your images to look like film. In this case, the presets are for some very famous chrome films. With that said, landscape and portrait photographers will both find great things in this set.

While many photographers are against the use of presets, many working photographers embrace them because of the fact that they make the typical workflow simpler and faster so that they can get back to shooting photos or trying to find more work.

Ease of Use

Replichrome II, once installed on your computer, integrates itself easily into Adobe Lightroom. To access them, you need to go to the development panel and then look at your presets. Totally Rad! puts the presets into different folders: one for Fujifilm one for Kodak, one or other films, one for other modifications.

For what it’s worth, you’ll still want to make modifications to the presets after they’re applied. This is on a case by case basis depending on what particular look you’re going for.

Image Quality

When it comes to actually rendering colors and the overall look, Replichrome tends to make some interesting choices. One of the appeals of film over digital is the fact that there isn’t as much contrast and instead you get some beautiful saturation. That’s pretty much the case with what Replichrome II offers but Totally Rad! goes about doing it a different way. Instead of touching the contrast slider at all, it typically goes after the highlights and shadows while working with individual color channels to work with things like skin tones, plant colors, etc all based on what the film was originally created to shoot.

In truth, it actually makes a lot of sense and still allows you to boost the overall exposure of the image or tweak the overall contrast–which in turn makes the process simpler and faster for the editor.

The presets also let you have your own choice of scanners.

Comparison Against Fujifilm Astia

We decided to put it up against another form of digital rendering. Fujifilm’s X series cameras have color profiles built in for their films. Since this pack included Astia, we decided to put it up against what Fujifilm would think of the same scene.

The Replichrome image is a RAW file from the X Pro 1 with the color filter applied while the bottom is a JPEG out of the camera with the Astia color setting.

We like Replichrome’s rendering better, though we see how many folks may flock towards Fujifilm’s option.

Conclusions

Totally Rad! has done some interesting work when it comes to creating film emulsions. In many ways, they’re better than what VSCO has created but VSCO also still has a very vintage appeal to it. Instead, Totally Rad! creates their images through science and reasoning. This may appeal a lot more to the hardcore film photographers rather than those who embrace hipster ideals and know how to sell them to clients.

Replichrome II sells for $99 on Totally Rad!’s website. Also consider our review of the first version of Replichrome.

Totally Rad! Replichrome II receives a four out of five star rating.

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