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So i may be getting sucked into the modern played out tumblr-esque photography scene but i can't help but dig how these photos come out looking.
Sorry for the basic bitch tumblr pictures but how do i get my pictures to look like that? Is it all done in photoshop/lightroom? I was told i can get that look by shooting "flat"..and i tried that but it doesnt look the same.
Or do i have to shoot film to get that kind of look?
Looks like film to me. You can get relatively close in lightroom (add grain/mess around), but imo there isn't any real way to get a 100 percent film look in post.
The faded look is accomished by using levels and messing with the black point. By making there no true black value you get that. The true black gets pushed to gray.
Film has nothing to do with vig. A shit lens makes vig.
Film doesn't look old and antique either, unless shot through a shit lens, again.
A properly exposed shot with a good range of mid values can be edited to have a lot of detail, but still with contrast and punch, an effect some films naturally get because they have good dynamic range.
And yeah, vsco has a lot of these low saturation faded effects packaged.
DrZoidbergThe faded look is accomished by using levels and messing with the black point. By making there no true black value you get that. The true black gets pushed to gray.
Film has nothing to do with vig. A shit lens makes vig.
Film doesn't look old and antique either, unless shot through a shit lens, again.
A properly exposed shot with a good range of mid values can be edited to have a lot of detail, but still with contrast and punch, an effect some films naturally get because they have good dynamic range.
And yeah, vsco has a lot of these low saturation faded effects packaged.
So i can achieve this in photoshop?
Are there any camera settings i can mess around with on my t2i that can help it out some more?
yeah you can do all sorts of shit in photoshop, just desaturate, lower contrast (or shoot with less contrast), add grain, etc.
Remember to expose correctly in the first place though and shoot in raw, gives you a lot more room to work in post.
Those 3 photos aren't really the same look though imo...
i do not have lightroom i think i'm going to download it soon though! I have photoshop but i forgot everything i learned about it lol so i have to re learn shit.
and yeah i realize that about the pics after i posted the thread..but do u get what im talking about?
Are there any camera settings i can mess around with on my t2i that can help it out some more?
Thanks for the reply!
Photoshop. What you want out of camera is an image that's conducive to editing. Shoot in raw, try to have detail in all areas. That's not always possible, of course, but try to minimize blown highlights and completely missing shadows. The histogram might help, or zebra stripe mode if you've got that. A lot of mid values are good. So basically, expose properly and plan to recover shadow and highlight detail in the image on the computer. A flat image can be manipulated to be punchy but still not super contrasty and ugly, or faded and dull looking. If your scene has a shit ton of bright areas, you're going to sacrifice some shadow detail to make sure half the image isn't completely blown highlights. Don't use super high saturation mode or some crazy preset like that.
First of all, the first seems to be a scan of a print, unless they went through the trouble of adding debris and the black and white bars on the top and bottom.
Learn the curves dialogue box. The second image has red in the shadows. That can be accomplished by moving the bottom slider up on the y axis in the red channel. That makes the shadows have a red tint. Images like this often do that with blue or purple too. Doing this with the rgb channel will make the blacks go gray, so it looks faded. You might get some shadow detail that way. The second one is punchy, but not overly high contrast. An s curve in the rgb channel might help you there. It's also very yellow and green looking. The whites are creamy, sort of yellow and orange. I find that s curves can do a lot of useful stuff. Photoshop has a lot of redundancy so a lot of this can be accomplished in many ways.
The last is what I mean by having no true blacks. Use levels or curves to accomplish this. Notice how her leggings aren't really black, and neither are the parts on the tree. Nothing is truly black here, or if it is it's very sparse.
VSCO does all this sort of stuff, like adding red or blue to the shadows and moving the black point so it looks faded. It's partly why this look is so widespread, since it's rather point and click.
I don't remember exactly how I edited this but notice there's very little true black. The colors are highly differentiated, at least on my screen, but it doesn't look like a high contrast image. The brightness is the same in most areas, aka the histogram would display a lot of mid values, I think anyway...
Fog helps. I don't recall exactly how I did this one, but I'm sure I used some sort of gentle s curve because the original was probably too foggy looking. Again, very little true blacks here. I know I added blue to the image too. As for the vig, pretty much all my digi is shot on a point and shoot so a 24mm lens on a p and s isn't the greatest in terms or corner illumination.
Knowing the components of the final image helps. So rather than saying I want it to look super tumblr style, know that, for example, they have red or blue in the shadows, creamy whites, no true blacks and stuff like that. It makes it easier to accomplish a look when you know what it consists of in parts. Or just get VSCO.
If you have lightroom, get the VSCO Film Presets for lightroom. Each pack has a ton of presets that help to give you that initial look that you want. Once you have a starting point, you can go back and adjust everything and make it exactly how you want. You can get these for free, but if you're gonna pay for them I use Pack 03 the most. It's got the most variety of presets than any of the other packs.
