The working name of this recipe was “I Just Can’t Quit You.” Despite my love for it, I actually abandoned Velvia briefly. I tried to substitute a heavily saturated recipe I called Bold Astia (name taken from my first-generation Velvia recipe Bold Color), but I just couldn’t do that. I had to make Velvia work.
The issue I’ve always had with Velvia is it frequently gives distant features a blue haze. It also has a lot of natural contrast, which makes it tricky to use in the conditions I frequently have to deal with.
Bold Color is beautiful, and it is quite nice to work in the proper settings. However, like my other first-generation recipes, it uses a color temperature white balance, which doesn’t work in some lighting conditions. I attempted to adapt it to auto white balance, but that didn’t work.
Vivid Color is the closest I’ve been able to come to a general-purpose Velvia recipe. Real Color and Pleasing Color give me additional colorful options where Velvia isn’t right.
Here are some samples of the standard recipe. Note that I do not consider the Dynamic Range and exposure compensation settings to be part of the standard recipe. This will vary based on shooting conditions.
Here are some samples with boosted contrast:
And now for the recipe:
Vivid Color Film Simulation: Velvia White Balance: Auto R: -2 B: +3 Dynamic Range: Auto Highlights: 0 Shadows: -1 Color: +4 Sharpness: +2 Noise reduction: -3 Grain Effect: Weak CC Effect: Strong ISO: Auto Exp. Compensation: 0
This recipe is licensed: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)