Classic Negative preset for Lightroom & Sony Alpha
Classic Negative emulates consumer colour-negative film: magenta creeping into the highlights, cyan settling in the shadows, crushed blacks and midtones that stay warm and contrasty. It is the most opinionated of the Fujifilm profiles and the reason a lot of people bought into the system.
How to shoot and edit it
- The split-tone is the look. Resist neutralising the magenta/cyan cast — that is the film signature.
- Strong colour in frame helps. A red jacket or a green sign gives the palette something to bend.
- Deep shadows are intentional — protect the highlights instead and let the blacks fall.
The measured values
Decoded from the genuine Classic Neg profile. These are the slider equivalent — what it takes to reach this look without a colour profile. The .xmp you generate in the tool embeds the measured profile itself, so it needs far less on top.
Lightroom Classic
Light
Color
Presence
HSL / Color mixer
Tone curve
Color grading
Detail & effects
Grain
Sony Alpha — Creative Look
Adjustments
D-Range Optimizer
FL base adds film character. Strong A2/M1.5 WB shift reproduces the warm-magenta highlight cast. LUT data shows greens go teal (HueGreen +38) and magentas heavily muted.
Sony Alpha — Picture Profile
Main Settings
Black Gamma
Knee
Color
Color Depth
Detail
Classic Neg's signature is heavily DESATURATED greens (LUT SatGreen -76) and muted magentas (SatMagenta -55), so green depth is cut to -3 and magenta to -3 — the previous +2 green was backwards. Crushed middle black gamma -4 + black level -1 give the contrasty crushed shadows (LUT Contrast +15, Blacks -15). R+1 keeps the warm-channel density. The warm-highlight/cool-shadow split is handled by the WB shift in the Creative Look recipe (PP cannot split-tone).
Related looks
Classic Chrome is Fujifilm's documentary profile — modelled on the muted, slightly cold rendering of reportage slide film. Saturation drops across the board, shadows pick up a teal cast, greens slide toward olive, and highlights stay clean and faintly warm. It flatters overcast light and city streets far more than bright sun.
Nostalgic Negative is built on American new-colour photography of the seventies: amber shadows, faded lifted blacks, golden skin and a general sense of a print left in a drawer for forty years. Warm without being orange, faded without losing structure.
The early-2000s compact camera aesthetic that came back around: oversaturated colour, aggressive sharpening, highlights that blow flat, a faint green-magenta cast and the unmistakable look of a direct on-camera flash. Technically bad, culturally dominant.
Make your own version of Classic Negative preset
Adjust the description, add a reference photo, or import a preset you already own — Preset Lab returns the Lightroom values and the in-camera settings together.
Open the generator