DxO FilmPack 8 Review, and Why the Film Look Finally Holds Up

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Black and white photograph of the Ponte della Maddalena with a vintage Fiat parked beneath a plane tree

Most film presets look convincing as a thumbnail and fall apart the moment you zoom to 100%. Nine times out of ten the culprit is the grain. It sits on top of the photograph as an even texture rather than rising out of the image, and anyone who has spent time with real negatives on a light box spots it straight away.

DxO FilmPack 8 is film simulation software that applies the measured colour response, tonal curve and grain of real analogue film stocks to digital files. It runs on its own or as a plugin for Lightroom Classic, Photoshop and DxO PhotoLab, and it is the most convincing film look I have used.

What makes measured film different from a preset someone designed by eye?

How DxO FilmPack 8 builds its film renderings

DxO measures the film rather than imitating it. Each stock is exposed on calibrated targets and real subjects, processed by professional laboratories, and digitised so the colour response and the actual grain structure can be extracted.

That is a very different exercise from someone deciding what Portra ought to feel like. It is why the colour shifts sit where you expect them to, and why the grain reads as silver halide rather than as noise with a fancy name. Version 8, released in September 2025, added fifteen new renderings built the same way.

The detail that will matter to anyone who spent years in a darkroom is that grain depends on the size of the negative. A 35mm frame enlarged to a 30 x 40cm print is magnified far more than a 5 x 4 sheet, so its grain is far more visible. FilmPack lets you set grain by format, which is the right way to think about it.

Chart showing how much each film format is enlarged for a 30 x 40 cm print, from 12.5 times for 35mm to 2.9 times for 5 x 4 sheet film

Where DxO FilmPack 8 fits in a Lightroom Classic workflow

FilmPack belongs at the end of your processing, not the start. Finish your tonal and local work in Lightroom Classic, then choose Photo > Edit In > DxO FilmPack 8 and return a new file alongside the original.

Understand the round trip before you rely on it. Lightroom Classic hands the plugin a rendered TIFF, not the raw file, so the film look is fixed in that copy once you save. Your raw file is untouched, and you can run it again whenever you like, but you cannot reopen the rendering and nudge it the way you would a Develop panel setting.

Photoshop users get the most from version 8. A dedicated panel lists every rendering, including your own, and applies them without launching the full application. For a set of images that need the same look, that saves a great deal of clicking.

The warm plaster and washing in this frame from Tuscany suit a colour negative rendering. Skin tones and terracotta are where measured film stocks look most convincing.

Washing hanging above a shuttered window with a pot of yellow flowers on a warm ochre wall in Tuscany

Scanned film optimisation, for the shoebox of negatives

If you digitise old film with a camera and a light panel, this tool may justify the price on its own. It inverts negatives, removes the colour cast that inversion leaves behind, and gives you a tone curve that works before the main adjustments.

Several starting presets are built from the parameters of common film scanners, and you can save your own. That matters when you are working through a few hundred frames of the same stock shot in the same conditions.

What DxO FilmPack 8 is not

It is not a full editor, and it does not pretend to be. It has luminosity masks with brush refinement, which are good for holding back a bright sky. It lacks the control points of the Nik Collection or the AI masks of Lightroom Classic, so any correction to one object in the frame belongs before or after FilmPack.

The Time Warp mode, which runs your image through two centuries of photographic processes, is entertaining and largely a novelty. I would not buy the software for it.

A narrow cobbled lane in an Italian hill town at night, wet stones reflecting the light of a wall lamp

A new licence costs £129.99, with upgrades from FilmPack 7 at £69.99. That is not trivial for a specialist tool, so use the 30-day trial and run a dozen of your own frames through it before you decide. If you prefer to stay inside Lightroom Classic for black and white, my toned mono profiles are another route, and why photography keeps looking backwards explores why we want this look at all.

If you can still remember what your own negatives looked like on the light box, try the trial and see whether the grain convinces you. Let me know in the comments how you get on.

Frequently asked questions

How much does DxO FilmPack 8 cost?

A new licence is £129.99 and an upgrade from FilmPack 7 is £69.99. DxO offers a 30-day free trial.

Does DxO FilmPack 8 work with Lightroom Classic?

Yes, as a plugin. Lightroom Classic sends a rendered TIFF to FilmPack and receives a new file back alongside the original. The film look is fixed in that file once saved.

Can FilmPack 8 edit raw files?

Yes, when used as a standalone application it opens raw files directly and applies DxO's optical corrections. As a plugin from Lightroom Classic it works on a TIFF.

Is FilmPack good for scanning old negatives?

Yes. Version 8 includes a scanned film optimisation tool that inverts negatives, removes the orange mask cast and gives you a tone curve for the scan.