Ektacolor Pro 400 is Portra 400: the look, and how to build it on iPhone

26 September 2026

Ektacolor Pro 400 is Portra 400 under a new name, so the look is the same one people have been chasing on iPhone for years. It has low contrast, warm-neutral skin, soft pastel greens, highlights that roll off rather than clip, and fine grain. Below is what defines that look and an original recipe that recreates it on iPhone, live in the viewfinder.

Ektacolor Pro vs Portra: what changed

On 24 March 2026, PetaPixel reported that Kodak's Ektacolor Pro 160, 400 and 800 are the new name of Portra. They are the same speeds and formats, with the same qualities promised. The change is about distribution. Kodak Alaris used to sell Kodak's still films, and Eastman Kodak has been taking that back under its own name. Kodak launched Ektapan black and white films the same day.

Kodak's own Ektacolor Pro 400 page doesn't mention Portra. It does describe the film the way Portra 400 has always been described: very fine grain for a 400-speed film, "exceptional skin tones", and "outstanding exposure latitude". PetaPixel wrote that the films "appear to be" rebranded Portra. So far nobody has shown a difference between them. If you are searching "Ektacolor Pro vs Portra", the short answer is that you are comparing one film with itself.

For looks, the new name changes nothing. People will keep searching for "Portra", and the look is the same whichever box it comes in.

What the Portra 400 look actually is

Portra was designed for professional portrait and wedding work. That brief shaped every part of how it looks.

• Low contrast. The tone curve is gentle, so faces don't pick up hard shadows and a white dress next to a dark suit both keep detail.
• Wide latitude and a soft shoulder. Colour negative film takes a lot of overexposure before highlights block up. Bright areas compress gradually instead of clipping.
• Warm-neutral skin. Skin goes slightly warm and creamy, not orange. Blemishes and redness are played down.
• Muted, pastel greens. Foliage comes out softer and slightly yellower than a digital camera renders it. This is one of the easiest tells.
• Fine grain. For a 400-speed film it's tight and quiet, especially when the film is well exposed.
• It loves overexposure. Many shooters rate Portra 400 at 200 or even 100. The result is brighter, airier and more pastel, with cleaner shadows. The "Portra look" on social media is usually overexposed Portra.

Put together: a phone photo looks like Portra when it is a little brighter than the camera wants, softer in contrast, gentle in the highlights, calm in the greens and kind to skin.

The free route

Without an app, you can get partway there in the iPhone's Photos editor. Lower Contrast, raise Exposure slightly, lower Highlights, add a touch of Warmth and reduce Vibrance. It's worth trying on a portrait in open shade. You can't target greens or skin separately, and you can't add grain. You also have to repeat it for every photo, and the iPhone's own processing is already baked into the HEIF. Our post on making iPhone photos look like film covers the no-app options in more detail.

Recipe: Pastel Pro

This is our own recipe, inspired by the Portra 400 look. It starts from Chobial Portrait, a professional portrait-negative look with soft contrast, creamy skin and muted greens, so most of the work is done before you start. The recipe pushes it further toward the overexposed, pastel version people search for. As with any recipe, it is a starting point. Adjust it on your own photos.

What each part does:

• Exposure +0.3 EV is the digital version of rating the film slower. It develops the RAW about a third of a stop brighter. Raise it to +0.7 for the "shot at 200" look.
• Contrast down, Highlights down, Highlight Rolloff up give the soft shoulder. Bright skin and white fabric fade out gradually instead of clipping. Rolloff matters more than Highlights here. Try 80% if your scenes have a lot of sky.
• Orange and red are where skin lives. Less saturation with a little more luminance in orange gives creamy skin without the orange cast that a global warm shift causes. Temperature +200K is only enough to keep the overall image warm-neutral.
• Green and aqua pulled down and lightened give the pastel foliage that marks a colour negative.
• Grain is the 35mm ISO 400 stock at a modest amount and slightly finer size. Well-exposed Portra is quiet. Too much grain is the quickest way to make this look cheap. More on that in why digital grain looks fake.
• Subtle halation adds a faint warm edge to backlit hair and window light. Turn Amount to 0 if you don't want it.

Doing it in Chobial

1. Open Films (hold the film on the camera), tap + › New Film and start from Chobial Portrait. The Make your own film tutorial covers each section.
2. Choose a portrait from your library as the preview and enter the settings. Hold the preview to compare with plain Chobial Portrait.
3. Save. Pastel Pro is now in the camera's strip. Load it and the viewfinder shows the look live, so you can see how skin renders while you're still with your subject.
4. Shoot in open shade, backlight or window light. Those are Portra's natural conditions.
5. To try the film on older portraits, open one in the Library, choose the Film tool and tap Pastel Pro. The photo develops again from its RAW.
6. Happy with it? Share it as a QR Film Code so a friend can shoot the same film.

"Overexpose by a stop" on a RAW file

On film, overexposing Portra works because the negative has headroom. Extra light fills in the shadows, and the highlights compress without clipping. A digital sensor works the other way round: it clips hard at the top and holds a lot in the shadows. If you really overexpose an iPhone by a stop, you can lose the sky and the highlights on skin.

So separate the two parts of the advice.

• At capture, protect the highlights. Turn on Zebra under DISP and keep the stripes off faces and skies. See manual controls.
• At develop time, add the brightness. The film's Develop › Exposure does that. For a single photo, the Light tool's Exposure reaches into the RAW. Because every photo stays a negative, you can decide on a frame-by-frame basis how "overexposed" it should look.

You get the pastel, lifted look without the clipped highlights that a real stop of digital overexposure would cost you.

Where this recipe falls short

This recipe gives you Portra's colour and tone, not the whole medium. A Frontier or Noritsu scan adds its own colour, and real film has a medium-format depth that no phone sensor has. Under hard midday sun and mixed artificial light, the soft Portra look can go flat. For those, a punchier film such as Chobial Gold (our take on a Kodak Gold-type look, covered in Kodak Gold on iPhone) often suits better. You can switch later without reshooting.

Kodak, Portra, Ektacolor, Ektapan and Kodak Gold are trademarks of Eastman Kodak Company. Chobial is not affiliated with Kodak.

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