This year I’ve been shooting a lot of film, with a Rollei, a bunch of Polaroid cameras and then with my Contax 645. Much as I love my digital cameras, I’ve come to appreciate the peculiar qualities of images shot on film: the fact that you have to make every shot count and the almost visceral sense of texture. But sometimes I don’t have a film camera with me (the Contax is huge). Sometimes I shoot images with my Nikon and wish I’d shot them on film. And shooting film all the time is very expensive!
Fortunately, through the magic of digital post-processing, you can achieve the feel of film without the fuss. By comparing scanned film images with digital images shot at the same time, I’ve been able to fine-tune how I do this, and in this post I’ll show how various digital processing techniques can approximate the look of film. There are no right answers here; I often try lots of different settings until I find one I like. But do this for a while and you’ll soon be able to tell which Action or Preset (or which combination of them) will give you the look you want.
Let’s start with my original shot, taken with the Contax using Kodak Portra 400 film in the south of France. To me, this image conjures up the heat of the day, mixed with the heady smell of the lavender.
I also took the same picture using my Nikon D800. Here’s the straight digital image. It looks rather colder and sharper.
Now let’s see what we can do to try to emulate the feel of film, using various Actions for Adobe Photoshop (I use CS5). Here’s Nelly Nero’s “I Fake Film”. She has her free Actions listed with a link on her Flickr page.
This is De VetPan’s Ektar 100. He has a whole host of actions and presets which he sells here. This is from his filmpan series.
K Miller, a wedding and portrait photographer, has four sets of Actions inspired by film photography. Each set is designed to recreate a different style of film photography, such as Lomography or instant photography. I used SX70 from her Chunfen set here, which isn’t directly comparable to the Portra version, but made me smile nevertheless.
Totally Rad make Actions for Photoshop and Presets for Lightroom, some of which have the feel of film. They encourage you to mix their Actions and publish recipes of the results.
Florabella make many packs of Actions, some of which include some film-inspired ones. Their black-and-white actions are some of my all-time favourites (although they can be a little dark at times) and you can control the degree of vignetting and haze. Here I’ve used the classic film look from their Classic Workflow.
Our very own Cara has several sets of presets which give that lovely film-like look. They work in Lightroom 3. Here’s the picture done in Scroggins film by Cara’s presets. You can buy them here.
The Visual Supply Company make Adobe Camera Raw and Lightroom Presets to emulate specific types of film made by Kodak, Fuji and others. You can tailor each image further by using the toolkit. I’ve found it’s also a good way to learn about the properties of the different types of film, and how they will make particular kinds of image look when shooting with my film camera. I’ve used the Portra 400 preset here.
Kellie Hatcher started by doing some Presets inspired by black-and-white film and then released her colour presets by popular demand! I used Odette here.
The beauty of Lightroom 4, for all you video fans, is that you can also grade (in other words, tone) your video using whichever film-like preset you prefer. I’ve had a lot of fun playing with grain and other effects on small video clips and am looking forward to more adventures in the future.
Even if you don’t have Photoshop or Lightroom, or if you do but you don’t want to buy Actions or Presets, you can still get that film look using Instagram on an Apple or Android smartphone, or using Poladroid, which does a similar fake-Polaroid thing on Mac or Windows desktop machines. I still have a display of my fake Polaroids on the wall that I made when the kids were younger, and before I had an actual Polaroid camera. This is how my French photo looks as a Poladroid:
I wish you luck with your film fakery. You can use it as a substitute for shooting film. And you may find, like I do, that it makes you appreciate film even more.
kirstin of fleeting moments
ah this is going to be so helpful for many, and very fun for them too!
These are some great resources. Thank you!
Kirstin this is fantastic. I use VSCO Film in Aperture 3, as well as RadLab but it’s great to see how some of these other great action sets can help to get the softness of film. I have a (camera nerd) friend who laughs at me because I bought a digital camera known for its clarity and sharpness and yet I add grain to every one of my photos!
Fantastic ost. Now I have so many new actions and presets to check out!
Thanks for this Kirstin! Can’t wait to check some of these out!
Some of the filmier Totally Rad Actions are offered for free (renamed) on the Pioneer Woman blog: http://thepioneerwoman.com/photography/category/photoshop-actions/ (and some of them are available for photoshop elements too).
Another free film action that I really like is Fallout 75’s Vintage Film: http://www.flickr.com/groups/technique/discuss/72157601062925085/.
This is worth a read: http://www.prime-junta.net/pont/How_to/100_Curves_and_Films/_Curves_and_films.html. He gives recipes to use in channels for different black & white film feels, and he has some downloadable curves for photoshop and LR4 that simulate different color films.
Also, Nik Color Efex and Silver Efex (not free) both have a lot of film presets. The Silver Efex ones work particularly well.
Thanks for these tips, Deirdre. I will have to check these out!
I never knew all that could be done!
Beautifully done Kirstin!!! What a fantastic resource this piece is–I will have to try soon, if I can tear myself away from my film cameras!!! xxxooo
I’m so impressed by you Photoshop users – I never could manage to take enough time off to really get into Photoshop and its equivalents.
This is a super helpful post, Kirstin! I love seeing all the examples. Still….nothing really compares to that first shot on real film for me, though. xoxo
what a fun article
i use Rebecca Lily actions on my digital photos
the day i decided to go back to film was the day i realised that i was spending all my time processing my digital photos to try and give them the look of film…
i have to agree with Meghan, nothing really compares…
these are all great and fun tools though…
and i confess that i used to be a poladroid addict… before getting my hands on my Mum’s 600…
Wonderful article!!!
so many new presets up there for me to explore…and lots of freebies too! thanks for this!
Love this post! And another fun one for Instagram users is ShakeIt. You can actually pull a photo into the app and get a slightly different result each time it processes…almost like a “real” Polaroid print!
Oh yes, Leslie! I love ShakeIt! Good point!
This is so helpful! Can’t wait to explore these resources!
Actions are lazy and derivative. Be original, people.
Comments like this without our being able to see your work aren’t very helpful.
I use actions to learn from them. Occasionally they work perfectly with very little adjustment, but for the most part I open them up, tweak all the layers, and use what I learned to do my own thing. I tweak sliders in ACR presets, too, and learn from the settings. Take a look at two people using the same actions, and own their style (usually) still comes through.
beautifully done, i love how you laid these all out side by side. inspires me to give it a whirl someday 🙂
Kirstin, this is a very interesting post.
I hope it’s ok to share an idea with you as this is a topic that really interests me too.
You are right, the digital result looks very cold compared to your film shot. I would suggest trying a different white balance (the D700 and the D800 are both not great with auto white balance).
The key benefits of film besides color are highlight detail and dynamic range. I would have loved to see an example of that too with Portra vs. the D800.
Beautiful film original! May I ask where you get it processed and scanned? Love these articles!
A good post. But your original shot on film is just so much better. It has great DoF and superb colour. The digital shot is flat and colourless. I suppose if someone didnt have a film camera then this would be a reasonable alternative. It doesnt seem to recreate film authentically.
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