Timothy Parker Consulting Incorporated

Achieving film effects with digital manipulation

You’ve spent a lot of money on your digital camera and you use it to replace your older film-based camera. Digital photography is fast, easy, and powerful. You don’t have to wait for film developing, and you can easily modify your prints on your computer. And yet, there are some effects you could achieve in the darkroom or using your film camera’s features that are difficult to achieve with digital cameras. Those photographers who have a strong film background, or who mix both formats regularly, miss those effects with digital and want to be able to recreate them. Why on earth would you want to make digital pictures look like they came from film? There are several reasons, most notably to hide the origins of the picture and also to enhance the picture’s look.

Color Supersaturation

The most commonly noted difference between film and digital pictures (especially among serious photographers) is color saturation. Some films, such as those from Fuji, allow you to supersaturate colors in a picture to good effect. While the colors may not be as realistic as those rendered by more color-neutral films like Kodak’s, the supersaturated colors can add “oomph” to a picture and make it more visually striking. This is especially true when shooting colorful objects or trying to make an item stand out in the frame.

Most digital cameras have fixed color sensitivity because of the nature of the CCD chips used in the process. The very nature of CCD chips means that color saturation is set to conform to a fairly benign curve, with response for different wavelengths predictable and unchangeable. Some digital cameras do provide a little bit of color manipulation capabilities although the majority of these are software algorithms and not modifications of the CCD sensitivities themselves. The corrections tend to be limited and used only for correction of white levels or correcting tungsten effects.

Instead, as digital photographers we have to rely on software to achieve the same color supersaturation achieved in film. The effect is surprisingly easy to achieve with almost any photo editing software. Figure (cactus1.jpg) shows a simple example of boosting color saturation. The sky behind the cactus was a washed-out, light, unexciting blue until it was boosted in Adobe Photoshop. By using the Image->Adjust->Hue/Saturation option and playing with the Hue and Saturation sliders, the blue sky can be darkened to give it more impact, without affecting the color balance (if you go too far, the sky will turn green). The green of the cactus can also be darkened a little to give more contrast in the photo. Figure (cactus2.jpg) shows the same shot but with Hue boosted +22 and Saturation dropped to –15. This gives a good contrast between the green and blue without looking artificial. Fine tuning the settings to your own taste can give even better settings. Another approach to this photo would be to mask the cactus and adjust the hue of the blue sky separately, but since we want to adjust the green color anyway, we can do both together with the Hue and Saturation sliders. On more complex photos with mixes of many colors, this approach must be handled carefully to avoid upsetting some colors too much.

Another approach to saturation effects is to use the Dodge, Burn and Sponge tools to lighten or darken specific portions of a picture. This is useful if there is only a small part of the picture, or a specific region, that needs enhancing. Another way to alter color balance and introduce saturation effects is to tone down the entire photo using the Hue slider to a low value (such as –60) that results in a washed-out effect. Then use the Erase to History function to bring back any parts of the image that you want to add punch to, restoring the original colors over the washed out photo. Playing with the Hue settings let you achieve a good balance between original colors and washed out image.

Image Toning

Toned images are often used for two reason: artistic effects and to duplicate aged photos (using sepia tinting most commonly). In the film darkroom the effect is achieved by adding toning solutions (such as Selenium or Platinum) to the developer stage. The effect is difficult to control exactly and takes a lot of experience to get consistent results. Using Photoshop or other tools, the effect is much easier to achieve and can be adjusted on-screen prior to printing.

Figure (old1.jpg) shows a typical building shot that we want to age using sepia toning effects. In Photoshop choose the entire photo area with Select->All, then go to the Color palette and select CMYK from the drop-down menu. Adjust the CMYK sliders to the color you want (for Sepia, try C=43, M=48, Y=64, K=38), then use Edit->Fill, choose “Foreground color” for the Use box and “Color” for the Mode box, and the image should convert to sepia toning. To get a realistic aged effect, you’ll want to blur the image a little and add a touch of grain, as shown in figure (old2.jpg). To finish the aging process you could add some effects such as scratches or water stains.

Platinum and selenium toning works in much the same way, with you choosing the proper CMYK settings for the color effects you want. You can also do highlighting of certain areas in the same way, using masking to control which areas of the photo are affected.

Graininess

Grain is an effect tool for some photos, although it tends to be overused. Film photographers can create grain effects in the camera (by carefully choosing the film and exposure conditions) and during processing in the developing stage. Grain is difficult to reproduce in a digital camera (the quality setting is a poor substitute for grain effects), but grain is easily introduced in image editing software. Most package have a grain effect, such as Photoshop’s Filter->Texture->Grain effect. This lets you control the size of the grain, the contrast the grain adds to the photo, and the effect the grain has on the pizels underlying the grain. Usually, grain is added by lumping underlying pixels into a larger pixel, as well as adding some blurred edge effects.

Packages like Photoshop have one major problem with their grain effects: the grains are in all colors, often bright, which is nothing like the effect grain adds in film. In order to change the effect to more accurately reflect film or print grain, you need to use Lab colors and then alter only the Lightness channel. You can do this in Photoshop quite easily by first setting to Lab color (Image->Mode->Lab Color), choose the Lightness channel (Window->Show Channels->Lightness), select the Grain filter (Filter->Texture->Grain) and adjust the grain from this menu. You’ll probably want to convert the photo back to a different color setting so you can save it in any format.

Lens flare

With film cameras lens flare can occur accidentally or deliberately. Most often, it’s the former and the darkroom must be used to eliminate the flare. Sometimes, though, flare can be added at the time of taking the picture to enhance a photograph’s image. Controlling flare properly can be difficult, and often accidental results look best. Duplicating flare in a digital camera is difficult because CCD pixels do not react the same way to flare effects. Usually, they either leave the pixels as overexposed white areas, or suppress them automatically into a gray color.

If you want to add flare for effect, practically any photo editing software provides the tools. However, you must be careful to make the flare look realistic, unless you are going for an artificial appearance. Photoshop uses add flare with the Filter->Render->Lens Fare dialog which lets you control the brightness of the flare as well as the location of the flare center. Choosing the lens type to emulate lets you control the flare size and appearance to some extent, although these flares almost always look poor compared to film-based flares. Often, the digital flare effect manifests itself as simply a white blob on the photo, which is not the effect desired. Figure (flare1.jpg) shows the addition of a flare effect to simulate the sun behind a tree. Adjusting the brightness of the flare allows you to prevent overwhelming the image with the flare effect.

Blur

Blurring is a technique film-based sports photographers excel at, because they deliberately pan their camera to induce blur in the background and foreground object, mostly to convey the sense of speed. Blur can be used for more abstract effects, too, such as people walking, or birds flying. Again, the blur adds the sense of motion. Most digital cameras do not allow you to alter the exposure times to induce blur deliberately, although some (such as the Nikon D1) provide this capability. Instead, you have to resort to image editing software to add blur.

Most people make the mistake of arbitrarily applying blur evenly to an entire photo. This usually results in the main object of interest appearing out-of-focus and difficult to discern from the background. Instead, you must apply blur carefully to achieve the effects you want. A typical use of blur is to draw attention to a specific point in a photo by blurring everything around it. This is done by first sharpening the image with Filters->Sharpen->Unsharp Mask and sharpen the area that will be the central focus. Next, choose a background area and apply Gaussian blur (which imposes a mathematical equation rather than a simple averaging) and feather the edges where it overlaps with your sharp area (use the Select->Feather dialog box to control the amount of feathering). You may have to touch up the feathered areas with a little blur using the blur tool, then apply Gaussian Blur (Filter->Blur->Gaussian Blur) to the entire photo, controlling the radius from your center point for the best effect.

Instead of Gaussian Blur, you can also use Radial Blur that blurs the photo from a central point out, or allows rotation of the image around a central point (Filter->Blur->Radial Blur). The Radial Blur can be used to enhance some photos quite dramatically. He Radial Blur dialog also allows you to use Zoom blur, which simulates a photographer sliding a zoom lens in or out while exposing film. This produces a blur that moves out from a central image, distorting the rest of the frame. An example of a Photoshop zoom blur is shown in figure (zoom1.jpg) that uses the Porsche’s hood emblem as the center point of the zoom. The effect can be varied from slight to extreme, but lower zoom settings tend to produce the best images.

Supercontrast

Like supersaturation of colors, supercontrast is an effect almost always added in the darkroom by film photographers. All digital photo-editing suites provide a contrast slider that affects the entire image (or a portion of one), modifying the entire spectrum of colors at the same time. To get really contrasty prints, most photographers resort to half-tome or black-and-white film, and then manipulate the image in the darkroom by the right combination of paper and developer.

You can emulate supercontrast in an image in a digital editor by first converting the photo to a halftone. Halftone uses foreground and background colors that are contrasty by themselves, usually of the same general color. Start by setting a foreground color for your photo using the Color Picker, and then select the Background color. Next, apply the Halftone Pattern filter (Filter->Sketch->Halftone Pattern). The Halftone Pattern filter lets you choose the pattern and effects you want, allowing some creativity in the application of the halftone final image. Use the size and contrast sliders in the Halftone Pattern dialog to control the contrast of the photo. For supercontrast effects, you need to push the contrast quite high.

These are just a few of the ways you can emulate well-known and oft-used film effects with your digital prints. Image editing tools like Adobe Photoshop offer many different ways to manipulate your images. The key, most of the time, is to use effects in a subtle way to enhance rather than dominate your photos. Of course, if you are going for the look of a digitally manipulated image, the sky’s the limit!

Creating the Graininess effect: Step by Step

We can go through the process of adding graininess to your photos step-by-step to show you how easy it is to achieve film effects. Graininess is one of the most complicated procedures we discuss in this article, so it’s a good example of the process.

Beginning with your original digital photo (grain1.jpg), we first set the color to Lab Color using the drop-down menu Image->Mode->Lab Color (step1.jpg). Then, from the Channels windows, select the Lightness channel Window->Show Channels->Lightness (step2.jpg). The entire photo will convert to monochrome showing the lightness channel settings only. Finally, select the Grain filter Filter->Texture->Grain and manipulate the grain settings until you achieve the effect you are looking for (step3.jpg).

The Grain dialog (step4.jpg) lets you use the top controls to zoom in and out of the photo to examine the effect you are applying both close-up and at a distance. The Grain Type drop-down box at the bottom lets you select different grain sizes and patterns. For old photo effects, the Clumped setting works well. The Intensity and Contrast sliders can both be moved to adjust the grain effect, reflected in the preview window at the top o the dialog. Judging the exact effect from the preview window can be difficult, but with a little practice you’ll get used to choosing the right amount of grain. If you mess up, the undo (Ctrl-Z) is always available. To save the photo in color, convert it back to RGB or CYMK color mode (Image->Mode->RGB). The finished effect is shown in (grain2.jpg). To really age the photo you would probably want to add other effects like torn edges and water stains.

Solarization

Solarization is a technique many darkroom photographers try, but few succeed to make work effectively. For a photo to effectively solarize, there has to be enough contrast for the effect to work, yet there must also be enough flat areas for the solarization to stand out. A typical example of an image suitable for solarization is shown in figure (solar1.jpg).

The steps to solarization an image are a little complex, with some variation depending on the depth and color of the effect you want to achieve. For our photo, we start by selecting the the Curves adjustment layer (Layers->New->Adjustment Layer then Colors in the Type box). With the curve dialog displayed, drag the curve to resemble an inverted S as shown in figure (curve1.jpg). As you drag the curve around you can see then effect applied to your photo in the main window. Next, enhance the almost-negative image by using the Difference layer (Layers->Layer Options then Difference in the Mode box) and set the Opacity to a much lower value (such as 40 to 60% depending on the subtlety of the effect you want). The final print at this point is shown in figure (solar2.jpg).

You can stop the process at this point, or continue adding more layers. For example, you could add highlight in a color by using a new adjustment layer (Layers->New->Adjustment Layer then Selective Color in the Type box). Select the color to adjust in the box and the top and use the sliders to achieve the effect you want. We went for a more subtle color solarization as shown in figure (curve2.jpg). You can also apply the luminosity layer to make the solarization stand out more dramatically. Experimentation will lead you to the effect you need to make, but be prepared for a lot of trial and error (just like in the darkroom!).

Posterization

Posterization is often confused with solarization but the two effects are different. Posterization converts all areas of a photo to a flat color by removing shading and much of the fine-grain detail. The effect is supposed to end up like a silk-screened image, such as on a poster. To posterize an image simply use the Posterize option (Image->Adjust->Posterize) and manipulate the number of levels or colors that will be used (try 10 to 20 to start). Finally, apply the Fade Posterize effect (Filter->Fade Posterize) and experiment with the opacity slider to get the effect you want. Figure (poster1.jpg) shows a pyramid that has been posterized.

Vignette

Vignetting usually means to trim a picture down to a blurred edge highlighting the oject of interest in the middle. Usually it is used by portraitists to create a cameo-like appearance in a photo but it can also be effectively used in other photos to remove distracting backgrounds. One such case is the underwater photo shown in figure (vig1.jpg) which has a dark, unattractive background cluttered with reflected light from air bubbles and suspended matter.

Start the vignetting process by using the Elliptical Marquee tool (in the toolbar click and hold on the dotted square and then choose the ellipse). Of course, if you want to use any other shape, chose that. Use the Alt key to constrain the ellipse to the proper shape, and surround the focal point of the image with the marquee. Feather the edges using Select->Feather and choose a number that matches the effect you want (40 is a good starting point). Then select everything outside the marquee using Select->Inverse, then hit the delete key to fade the background to white (or any other color chosen from the color picker). When properly positioned on the page and sized to fill the paper, the image can look quite good (depending on the starting photo, of course!).

Vignette

Photographers use the term vignetting to mean two different things, although one is more accurate than the other in terms of true meaning. Vignetting usually means to trim a picture down to a blurred edge highlighting the object of interest in the middle. Usually it is used by portraitists to create a cameo-like appearance in a photo but it can also be effectively used in other photos to remove distracting backgrounds. One such case is the underwater photo shown in figure (vig1.jpg) which has a dark, unattractive background cluttered with reflected light from air bubbles and suspended matter.

The other use of the term vignetting is for trimming the edges off an image, usually on purpose (but sometimes accidentally). This effect is usually seen with wide-angle lenses, where the four corners have a curved black area caused by masking of the image. As mentioned, the cause is usually a lens cap that doesn’t clear the field of view, but some filters can also cause the effect. Some professionals use this effect well, deliberately framing the images with the vignetted corners. Most often the effect is caused by improperly framing the image!

To reproduce the effect in PhotoShop or any other image editing package, you need to create a mask that just trims the corners of the image, and then produce a little blur at those edges to show a little light leak (the edges are almost never pin-sharp). Figure (vignet1.pcx) shows a typical example where a wide-angle lens is used to capture a street scene at close quarters. After applying an elliptical mask, inverting, and filling the edges with black, the image is shown in (vignet2.pcx). The edges can now be blurred to create the lens-cap obstruction effect.

Scratches and dust

Adding scratches and dust effects to a digital image is a good way to make it look “aged”. This is particularly effective with other effects, such as toning or converting to black and white. Adding scratches and dust is as easy as choosing the effect from the PhotoShop menu (Filter->Noise->Dust and Scratches). The effect of the filter is to reduce the sharpness of the image, as you can see by checking the lettering on the building in (dust1.pcx). The Dust and Scratches filter has two sliders that allow you to adjust the magnitude of the effect, as well as the transition point where the effect becomes noticeable. Dust and Scratches is usually a subtle effect, although it can be exaggerated to show creases and negative scratches of considerable size.