Wondering how to recreate a certain aesthetic/photography style

^^^ The second one is tough, as the style is not as consistent across all the images, but it looks to be a combination of a tone curve adjustment and possibly some split toning. I've had a go on a random photo from my LR collection to get close to how some of them look.

Is this the kind of look you were after:

 
Yeah, that's perfect. Thanks! Can I ask how exactly you achieved this? I literally know nothing about editing.
Quick question- the photographer said he uses 35mm. Is it essential to achieving this style?
 
The three panels I used to get close to that look are:


After that I played about with the vibrance and contrast to suit the photo, but the settings above will get you in the ballpark with most photos (at least in my limited experiment last night). Start with that then have a play abut and see how you go with some different images. If you want the image to look a little warmer or cooler then you can use the balance slider in split toning to change how much the toning emphasises the highlights or shadows.

As for 35mm, not sure whether you mean he used a 35mm format camera or a 35mm lens, but either way it's not necessary to achieve that look no - the photo I posted is a square crop from a photo I took with my old Nikon d5100 which was originally shot with an 18mm lens and is an APS-C sensor camera.

Have fun playing about with it :)

*NB - The first one I haven't figured out yet, but it looks a similar process to the above except that I would expect the lighting etc was done when taking the shot rather than in post. So he/she may be using a film preset like VSCO or similar, but most of the work was done "in camera".
 
Last edited:
ashtennisguru said:
The three panels I used to get close to that look are:


After that I played about with the vibrance and contrast to suit the photo, but the settings above will get you in the ballpark with most photos (at least in my limited experiment last night). Start with that then have a play abut and see how you go with some different images. If you want the image to look a little warmer or cooler then you can use the balance slider in split toning to change how much the toning emphasises the highlights or shadows.

As for 35mm, not sure whether you mean he used a 35mm format camera or a 35mm lens, but either way it's not necessary to achieve that look no - the photo I posted is a square crop from a photo I took with my old Nikon d5100 which was originally shot with an 18mm lens and is an APS-C sensor camera.

Have fun playing about with it :)

*NB - The first one I haven't figured out yet, but it looks a similar process to the above except that I would expect the lighting etc was done when taking the shot rather than in post. So he/she may be using a film preset like VSCO or similar, but most of the work was done "in camera".
Click to expand...
That's great! Thanks for your help! [emoji3]
 
ashtennisguru said:
The three panels I used to get close to that look are:
*NB - The first one I haven't figured out yet, but it looks a similar process to the above except that I would expect the lighting etc was done when taking the shot rather than in post. So he/she may be using a film preset like VSCO or similar, but most of the work was done "in camera".
Click to expand...

I agree..

The first one is mainly about the lighting and the expressions the photographer & models have created. Then they've contrast - which has boosted the saturation - while keeping the highlights fairly muted. Then some kind of split toning. It looks a lot like some of the VSCO or other film-effect presets which are available (e.g. Alien Skin, Analog Efex Pro 2).

However.. on casual inspection it seems the highlights tend to have much more blue / green in them than is common in most film-effect presets, and the midtones a lot of red. The shadows are kind of green, and none of the blacks are true black. I think they've also been desaturated slightly before applying the toning. That's the opposite of the split toning suggested above.

The second is similar but but is probably more sophisticated since the photos seem to be stills captured from video. In which case the colour grading will probably have been done in a video editing suite.

For the first.. in photoshop I'd try a combination of.
  1. hue/saturation adjusment layer to reduce the saturation a little
  2. a curves layer where you bring down the end points of the red channel and lift it's middle, then do the opposite with the blue channel
  3. a curves layer on the rgb channel to add a little contrast with an S curve and lift the black point at the same time.
There are many, many ways to achieve the same effect within photoshop without using curves. Color balance adjustment layers, solid colour layers with various blend modes, 3d luts, selective colour, blend_ifs and so on.

I realise that you're a beginner to processing and that's probably not going to be a huge amount of help. If you really want to do this kind of thing then either try a preset or filter library or - better - I think you should start by getting familiar with adjustment layers and layer masks in photoshop. Phlearn has a lot of useful videos (and some complete duffers!).
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top