Dehancer Pro Review: Best Film Emulation Plugin for Lightroom (2025)

Dehancer Pro is a powerful Lightroom plugin that brings the look and feel of film to your digital photos. With realistic film simulations, organic grain, halation, bloom, and even overscan and damage effects, it’s a deep, creative tool for photographers who love the analogue aesthetic. Just be aware—it can be very slow with high-resolution files, especially on modest hardware.

Dehancer Pro Lightroom Plugin Review: Bringing the Magic of Film to Digital

There’s something unmistakably special about film photography. Whether it’s the rich colours, the subtle glow around highlights, or the beautifully imperfect textures, film has a way of capturing the world that feels more emotional and organic than digital. For those of us who love the film aesthetic but work mostly in digital, finding a way to authentically recreate that look has long been a challenge. That’s where Dehancer Pro comes in.

The Dehancer plugin for Lightroom Classic and Photoshop aims to do more than just slap on a film preset. It’s designed to replicate the full analogue process — from the choice of film stock and development technique to printing and scanning. And it does this with a surprising level of depth and nuance. After using it extensively on files from both my Fujifilm GFX100S and Nikon Z50, I’ve come to appreciate just how much creative potential it offers — though not without a few caveats, especially when it comes to performance.

Getting Started with Dehancer Pro

Before you begin editing, you’ll want to make sure Lightroom is set up correctly to hand off files to Dehancer. In your Lightroom Classic Preferences, under the External Editing tab, I recommend configuring your settings as follows: TIFF format, 16-bit, sRGB colour space, and 300 DPI. This ensures Dehancer is receiving a clean, high-quality image with plenty of colour information to work with.

In my workflow, I also make a few basic adjustments in Lightroom before exporting the image to the plugin. I set the Exposure to -1, reduce the Contrast to around -40, and increase the Blacks to about +60. This results in a flatter image that may look dull initially, but it provides a neutral base that seems to respond best to Dehancer’s film simulations. Think of it like starting with a raw film scan — you’re giving Dehancer more tonal room to work its magic.

An Authentic Film Experience

What sets Dehancer apart from most film emulation tools is how comprehensive it is. At the heart of the plugin is its Film Simulation module, which features an extensive collection of profiles based on real-world film stocks. From Kodak Portra to Fuji Velvia, Ilford HP5 to Kodak Vision3 250D, each profile is carefully calibrated to replicate the tone, contrast, and colour response of its real-life counterpart.

But this isn’t a one-click preset. The simulation is fully adjustable. You can fine-tune the look by adjusting exposure compensation, colour density, and print tonal contrast, among other things. It’s a bit like stepping into a darkroom and having control over every variable in the development process.

One of the standout features here is the ability to simulate push and pull processing. For those unfamiliar with film jargon, push processing involves shooting film at a higher ISO than rated and then overdeveloping it, resulting in increased contrast and more visible grain. Pull processing does the opposite — underdeveloping to reduce contrast and soften the image. In Dehancer, this is controlled via a simple slider, but the results are deeply nuanced. It allows you to completely transform the mood of a photo without relying on artificial contrast curves.

Grain That Feels Real

Another area where Dehancer excels is in its Film Grain module. Unlike digital noise, which often looks harsh and random, Dehancer’s grain behaves like real film grain. It’s organic, textured, and subtly integrated into the image.

You can adjust the size, amount, and resolution of the grain. Smaller grains work well for fine detail and a cleaner look, while larger grains evoke that gritty, documentary feel. The resolution slider is especially interesting — low resolution makes the grain appear more like it’s floating above the image, while high resolution integrates it tightly with the image details, as if it were part of the film emulsion itself. It’s this kind of attention to detail that makes Dehancer so satisfying to use.

Halation, Bloom, and Beyond

Dehancer doesn’t stop at colour and grain. It goes further to simulate some of the beautiful quirks of shooting film. Halation, for instance, is that warm, red glow you often see around bright highlights on colour film. It’s subtle but instantly recognisable. Dehancer lets you control the strength and softness of this effect, adding that authentic film glow without looking over-processed.

Bloom is another gem. It creates a soft glow around light sources, perfect for adding atmosphere to backlit scenes or enhancing specular highlights. It’s adjustable and can be dialled in precisely to match the mood you’re going for.

Toning and Printing Simulation

The Film Compression and Expand modules help control highlight rolloff and shadow depth, making the image feel more like it was developed in a chemical bath than on a computer screen. Film Compression, in particular, softens harsh transitions and keeps highlights from blowing out too abruptly — a common issue with digital sensors.

Once the image is shaped and toned, you can simulate the print stage, choosing from different paper types to subtly shift contrast and colour. It’s a small detail, but it adds another layer of realism. There’s even a Colour Head module based on traditional darkroom enlargers, allowing you to shift cyan, magenta, and yellow to rebalance the tones. It’s far more intuitive than using RGB curves and feels more tactile and analogue in approach.

Overscan and Film Damage

For those chasing a raw, scanned-negative aesthetic, Dehancer includes an Overscan feature that replicates the full film frame, including borders and even frame numbers in some cases. It’s a fantastic way to add authenticity, especially for projects with a retro or documentary vibe.

If you’re after that well-worn look, the Film Damage module lets you add scratches, dust, and other imperfections. Use it lightly for a hint of nostalgia or go all-in for a distressed, archival feel. It’s entirely up to you.

Performance — The One Drawback

As much as I love what Dehancer does, it would be unfair not to mention its biggest limitation: speed.

On my current setup — an Intel i7 CPU, 16GB RAM, and an NVIDIA GTX1060 GPU — the plugin performs reasonably well with smaller files, such as those from my Nikon Z50. It’s not lightning-fast, but it’s very usable and doesn’t interrupt the creative flow too much.

However, when working with 100-megapixel RAW files from the Fujifilm GFX100S, the performance drops significantly. Applying changes becomes sluggish, previews lag, and rendering can be painfully slow. It’s clear that Dehancer is doing a lot under the hood, but it also means that hardware matters — a lot. If you’re running a high-resolution camera and want to use Dehancer efficiently, you’ll need a more powerful GPU and more RAM than my current setup offers.

Final Thoughts

Despite the performance issues, I still find Dehancer Pro to be one of the most enjoyable and creatively satisfying plugins I’ve used in years. It’s not about creating a perfect image — it’s about creating one that feels honest, soulful, and full of character. From its rich film profiles to its realistic grain, halation, and bloom effects, Dehancer brings a tactile, analogue feel to digital photography that’s hard to replicate any other way.

If you’re a film lover working in a digital world, Dehancer Pro is absolutely worth exploring — just make sure your computer is ready to keep up.