You have probably heard us speak in praise of VSCO film before, Deb mused about how less is more with the VSCO App and Kirstin sampled a VSCO filter in Film Without Fuss. I believe Holly was the one who originally lured me in to the VSCO den with images from Bonnie Tsang. VSCO film works using custom camera profiles and presets to emulate the look of film and hopefully speed up your workflow. It integrates seamlessly with Lightroom (3 & 4), Aperture and ACR (6 & 7). I have been a believer since the day it was was released for Lr4. And just when I thought they couldn’t improve upon the already perfect Film 02 they announced Film Pack 03, the instant films last month. Previous pack owners where given a brief (and golden) opportunity to purchase 03 at half the price, Happy Birthday to me. In a few minutes I was turning my DSLR into Polaroid inspired beauties with Pack 03 in LightRoom. note: You’ll be happy to know that previous VSCO pack owners, are automatically a part of their loyalty program and receive a reduced price offer on future product releases.
Creating the look of film
I spent some time on the tutorial section of the site to make sure I knew how to get the most of the new filter set. Since most of us here have a solid working knowledge of most types of popular films I wondered what their process was when developing film specific filters. Turns out they actually sought out all the film filters you find within the set, 03 is comprised of 2 sets, consumer and professional with a total of 121 presets) and shot images on that film and then (magically I suppose) extracted the variations of each of those films, carefully cataloging them into the presets like PX680, SX70 and Fuji 3000. They also offer varying degrees of these films according to developing temperature, you will also find high contrast (HC) versions as well as a negative preset for those who like the goopy side of the Fuji pack film. You’ll find in the blacks lighter than the gray when you apply this.
professional preset: Fuji FP-100c Negative +
professional presets: Polaroid 690 warm +++ / Old Lens +++
added Toolkit – Tone: Fuji FP-300ob Cool
If you prefer a more washed out aged look you’ll prefer the consumer presets.
consumer presets: Px-70++, Clarity Down+, Vignette- Heavy // Toolkit (Pack 02) Tint: Magenta Shadows & Color Saturation
You will find the 121 film presets broken into two separate sets, consumer, these are films are typically what we think of with instant film like the stuff you put in your 600 One Step and professional, films from pack camera with peel apart type film like the 100 and 240 Land cameras. And when it came time to shooting with Time-Zero (my all time fav) the results were not what they expected, orange, orange and more orange. But they decided to embrace the quirkiness and added the presets in there anyway. I liken it to the Kelvin filter on Instagram, there are truly only a very few images that look good with that filter.
presets: PX-70 Warm & Time-Zero Expired Cold
New ToolKit
The pack also comes with s new ToolKit and yes this tool kit works with previous VSCO film packs, although you can not combine and stack tools with older packs. They also added the new profile for the Fuji X-Pro1, X-E1 , X100 and X10. Existing VSCo users you will also notice they added triple minus (—) and triple plus (+++) versions in the tool kit, which give you a slightly larger varying degree of filter effect.
VSCO Tips
Here are a few things I have learned along the way, most by trial and error and some by from the VSco blog.
- Always correct exposure and white balance before applying a preset. VSCO will override your settings for all other edits.
- Make sure your monitor has recently been calibrated, A big part of what VSCO Film does is add contrast. If your photo is primarily dark, then VSCO Film’s tone curves will probably make it seem like everything got darker. After you get used to using the filters you can adjust your in camera settings or apply exposure corrections after import into your photo editing software.
- Often tint needs to go a little more towards green for skin tones.
- Need someone to walk through the process watch this video.
professional preset: Polaroid 669 Cold
The most frequently asked question I hear …
I shoot in JPEG, can I use VSCO Film?
VSCO says:
“You can use VSCO Film to process JPEG images in LR4 by using the standard version of VSCO Film. Although we do highly recommend shooting in RAW. Shooting in RAW allows you to get maximum flexibility in editing as well as more dynamic range and color control. LR4 users will have great results using the “JPEG Contrast Fixer” tool in the toolkit.”
Bonus mosaic
Here are a few VSCO tagged photos from our Flickr Pool. If you are a VSCO user please include the tag #vsco we would love to see what you are creating with their filters.
1. saturday morning sprinkles, 2. soccer saturdays, 3. glisten, 4. in a chinatown kitchen shop
Happy editing,
Lindsey, aka modchik
I love to edit with VSCO. Currently I am using Aperture but will eventually switch over to Lightroom which will give me the power of VSCO 03. Thanks so much for the helpful tips! I’m trying to figure out what the dog has in its mouth, is it suet?
It’s a huge pine cone 😀 ha ha!!
I have VSCO 2, it was a present for my boyfriend, but when I went to buy VSCO 3 I found it quite expensive! A friend told about a new collection of actions to simulate film look, equal quality of VSCO a much more cheap: http://www.film-effect-photoshop.com ,I purchased Instant collections 1 & 2 and I’m very satisfied with results!
What a fantastic post, Lindsey! You know how much I love VSCO and I have adored trying out new things with this set.
I have yet to fully play with all the combinations, I do see the resemblances in the warm film filters since most if my Polas come out on the yellow side. I need to do a side by side comparison with film and then DSLR and it’s companion film filter. I see a series coming on.
I did this over the summer, shooting portra 400 and then comparing them directly with the VSCO portra presets.
I have VSCO 01 & 02 and eagerly purchased 03 when it was released. I love the quirky nature of the instant film filters but I think you have to be selective in the type of picture you use them with. Thank you for including my picture in your mosaic!
So true it needs to be vivid or else it ends up being a little flat or meh as we say here in the states. That photo in the mosaic is just stunning full screen I want that on my office wall!
sounds good, may well try it
i agree with suzi completely. i do love me some vsco. thanks for the tips and for including my photos in the mosaic!
Jamie you are a master at VSCO I really dig your editing style!!
I haven’t bought presets since I first started in LR. These have tempted me, more now after reading your post.
They are a lot of fun, I’m telling you it has cut my workflow time in half. I am going to talk about my other photo editing tool, (Rad Labs) soon on MM, the combination of both tools has changed my life!
Lovely images! Will VSCO work with Photoshop or only with LR?
If you are using PS CS6 or Creative Suite 6 then you can use the Camera Raw 7.1 plugin – the software requirements list ACR (Adobe Camera Raw) as one of the 3 programs that can run VSCO. I use Lr so I’m not the best person to ask about ACR or Aperture. Hope that helps Les!
I too have not bought any presets so far, but these are indeed tempting. I think I’ll be starting with VSCO 2 but love these effects.
Hi Lindsey,
Thanks for the great review and tutorial, this is awesome! I honestly appreciate the time it took to do this so thoroughly. I’m the product manager at VSCO and the lead developer of VSCO film, and I just wanted to explain the time-zero polaroid presets a bit. In short, it is a pretty crazy look that’s probably not much like the original film, and we know that. We tried several of these old packs and the sad fact of the matter is, at this point in time everything we could find was pretty well expired. In fact, we were only able to get one pack of this film to even deliver any results at all, the rest were too dried out to even spit out a usable photo. The one that did work was extremely orange, and we were faced with a choice: 1. Emulate exactly what we got as accurately as possible 2. Try and fudge our results to look like what we guess this film should look like. Obviously in their day the time-zero films looked much better than the results we got, but with no way of duplicating those kind of results with our test process now in 2013, we couldn’t accurately measure the original color shifts of this film. Ultimately, we felt the the most honest thing to do was to just deliver the results we did get as well as we possible. Although it is a very extreme look, we felt like it added a nice bit of spice to an already large set of presets that could be useful in certain applications. So, we know it’s crazy looking but that’s true to the results we got!
Thanks again!
Hi Zach, thanks for taking the time to comment! I love hearing the backstory about the time-zero polaroid preset too! (thanks for that) And a HUGE thank you for the tools! WOW! You have cut my workflow down considerably and really, made my editing life so much easier! I know all of us are HUGE fans of VSCO. Thanks for doing what you do over there 🙂
Zach, you’re welcome! I can only imagine the complexity behind some of these filters and appreciate you taking time to give us the ‘inside scoop’ on Time-Zero. Had I known you were in need I would have gladly sent you a working pack of my TZ (TZArtistic 10/09). For some reason I have held on to them and only exposed one pack, which turned out more green then anything else I’ve seen. In the future should you want to update the filters, I’d be happy to donate to the cause. And I echo Holly’s sentiments, thank you for VSCO, you have turned what was once a chore into something thoroughly enjoyable!
I love this post Lindsey!!! So well written and thought out. I have already pointed so many people to your post who have either been on the fence, or didn’t understand what the VSCO presets were all about. Wonderful! xo
You guys are too kind! Thank you for your encouragement and love! Lindsey, we just might take you up on your offer for some working TZ Film, could you email support@vsco.co about that? I’ll make sure they know you’ll be writing. At this point we’re all pretty tied up with other projects, so I can’t promise when any sort of new product or update with these films could appear, but I know we’d love to have a more true emulation of the time zero films!
You got it!
Lindsey, thanks for all the great info! I am seriously looking into this.
I am so in love with VSCO. I, too, bought the 03 pack when it was 1/2 off for current users. I’m in love. It’s motivated me to shoot more personal work, rather than just client work, so I can experiment and have some fun!
Thank you for all your tips. I recently just got the Vsco and I use lightroom 3 and I still can’t get my pictures to look like this. I have so much to learn still!
Okay,
I’m in the minority here. I’m not impressed with VSCO. I think they’re late to the party and a lateral step, not a forward one. Your saturated photos look digital, not like film at all, not even close actually. The desaturated films are stylish, but no more stylish than other tool sets offer, I mean, not worth the hype at all. Pudding Cam right out of the camera gives similar looks to VSCO. I think VSCO has potential, but the UI is confusing and dodgy and the price point is expensive. Also, the fact that shooting in RAW right now is really the only way to get anything out of the app at all, I’m just not as impressed. I will stick to my 645, Pure, ProCamera and continue to edit with SnapSeed, Iphoto, Photoviva and filterstorm for serious shots. Also, HelloCamera Concept is a real jewel that’s coming up fast.