Integration of desktop/lab workflow - a suggestion.

Hi, this may sound like quite a niche request. Alternatively, it might open up a new market for your product (or even for a cut-down version). Anyway here goes:

First, about myself. I have for decades been a film photographer. Don't worry - I'm not an analogue snob, although I did wait a long time before buying a digital camera, ad I love using it. In fact, one of its delights is that in many ways it carries over the limitations, faults, and complexities of "real cameras". That includes, in a way, the work flow.

I use Capture One in a limited way for the sort of dodging and burning, exposure control and contrast finessing I would do in my lab. I am still, however, somewhat tied to analogue prints. Printed digital output isn't the same for me.

My suggestion involves integrating the two. Would it be possible to allow for the scan of a photo (lets stick with monochrome to make it simple), to Capture One in the normal fashion - at the moment, I simply use a rig to photograph the negative on a lightboard at the highest quality I can and invert the negative in Capture one and make my changes - but to add an option?

This option would create of the following workflow:

Import the negative photo as a RAW file and select a new option to detail the exposure time it has had in the developer (with full acceptance that what follows applies only to the setup being used for that lab session only). Optionally, the user could enter and store details of the developer in use, its dilution, the equipment etc, but only as a memo for repeating the process in the future.

Then let the photographer work at their image, inverting it, pulling out some details, toning down some areas, tweaking to retrieve detail in shadows, changing overall brightness exposure etc.

Then - and here is the option - the user has the option to print out on optically neutral (or nearly) acetate those changes in the form of a printed filter to be used with the negative for printing. A cheat sheet could also be printed, giving suggested timings for overall exposure and when to add/remove the filter(s). That would allow for reproduction of near-identical multiple copies of photographically printed refined images.

I know from working in my lab that I would expect that there wouldn't be the possibility of absolute precision regarding placing filters in and out, but that we are very accustomed to a level of using degree of educated guesswork when we use physical masks such as our arms as it is. This type of option would take a lot of the guesswork out and could also be used to establish a new "baseline" print for further lab experimentation.

Just a suggestion.