Negative development is a pretty mechanical process by default, and yes I still shoot on film as well as digital and I love my lab. I think a good analogy is the editing, design, and typesetting of a book - it's visible on every single page and certainly affects perception of the work in multiple respects, but still a long way from being equivalent to authorship.

Even to the extent that development of a film is copyrightable, it's entirely derivative of the original exposure and certainly can't be considered to subsume it for authorship purposes.