Film tones in digital photos

Nikklaus · Feb 28, 2009

Alright, I'm going to do my absolute best to make my question clear, brace yourselves.

Essentially I want to make digital photos I take look better (weird eh...) - either by making them look more like they've been taken on film, or by making the tones nicer.

I'll start by posting a few photos with the sort of look I'm trying to achieve (I know these were shot with a digital camera, a Nikon D80):

...I'm sure you get the idea.

I once spoke to the guy who took these photos and he told me that he used photoshop to achieve this look. Very briefly he told me how to do it, but he wasn't clear, and this was about a year ago. Though I think he may have mentioned gradient maps? Overlays? I dunno...

Anyway I guess what I want to be able to have more control over the tone in my photos. I feel really lame posting more photos but I also really like the way these look though I believe they may have been shot on film:

I use a Nikon D80, and CS4, and would say I've got a pretty reasonable understanding of both. Anyway I hope I made sense. Any help on this topic would be MAJORLY amazing.

Cheers! :thumbup:

dxqcanada · Feb 28, 2009

Simulate film Photoshop
That is one site that provides some info.

There are a number of plug-ins that are made for Photoshop to do this for you.

AlexColeman · Feb 28, 2009

Look at DXO's film plugins.

Nikklaus · Feb 28, 2009

I managed to get hold of that guy who I spoke to a year ago and he talked me through it in depth this time, so chuffed.

His technique:

Duplicate the photo layer and change the blending mode to overlay. Set the transparency of the new layer to about 20%.

Go to image - adjustments - gradient map and select the red/green filter, obviously apply to the overlayed layer.

Do the same for as many colour sets as you see fit, today I've only used the red/green filter and the purple/green/orange filter. The same applies to all of these layers - the opacity should be around 20%, but it varies obviously according to the photo. Use as many layers as you want. It can be quite delicate. Every new gradient map layer has to be a duplicate of the original photo later.

Then he said he sometimes decreases the saturation and slightly tweaks the hue.

This is an example I made a few hours ago to show a friend of mine the results, on the left is the photo straight out of the camera, and on the right is the fiddled version.

I reckon the results are ace. I'm not very good with this technique yet but I think it's really good, and I haven't seen anything else like it before.

Garbz · Mar 1, 2009

Is your monitor properly calibrated or is your idea of making the photos "better" by turning normally pink skintones green? The tonality is good, but something in the colour looks rather unnatural.

djacobox372 · Mar 4, 2009

Garbz said:
Is your monitor properly calibrated or is your idea of making the photos "better" by turning normally pink skintones green? The tonality is good, but something in the colour looks rather unnatural.

"??Better??"

There is no such thing--it's all subjective.

I personally like the old film look, which includes a green hue in the highlights of skin tones which compliment the rest of the skin very nicely.

Garbz · Mar 5, 2009

That really depends entirely on the film, but I was just pointing out that to me that one looks green, in case the OP's monitor has a purple cast and he things they look very neutral. But if that's the intended effect then carry on

djacobox372 · Mar 5, 2009

Garbz said:
That really depends entirely on the film, but I was just pointing out that to me that one looks green, in case the OP's monitor has a purple cast and he things they look very neutral. But if that's the intended effect then carry on

Of course, and I don't think the examples were perfect, this is more of the look that I'm particularly like: