I learned this concept from using film. But it alone is not a film look. Yry it in some real film looks, grab my FREE Filmist 2 presets min pack here... seimeffects.com/filmist
@@tayloriginals999 That’s correct because viewing digital images is usually done on a computer screen, which is a transmissive medium, vs viewing prints like contact sheets(remember them?)which is a reflective medium.
If you read a an oil painting color theory book (Munsell Student Guide) this is a principle that is important for painting. I call it the 80/20 rule. What that means is, an artist needs to identify the most prominent color they want the viewer to see. That color is higher in chroma (intensity) and can make up NO MORE than 20% of the surface area. The other colors are all lower chroma, or more neutralized because they are acting in support of the main color. Those neutrals are to make up the 80% of the surface area. This is what drives the viewers eye to what the artist wants them to look at. This is almost exactly what you did here and you can make it work for almost any visual medium. It just takes a little bit of observation and thought to determine WHAT you want your work to portray to your viewer. It can be used with any color combination as well. Learn the color wheel, identify main color, subjugate the rest of them.
Take it one step further and shoot in black and white! You’ll learn to be a better photographer, as you’re looking at contrast elements that you want to put in the photo. The study of light and shadows will simplify your vision results. Color creates a very busy environment, therefore your images can never match what you learn from black-and-white. From there, you can bring in color when it’s apposite!
@@moustachio334 I used to own an orange filter just for that reason, but nothing replaces Fuji built-in Acros! Unless you want to spend money on a monochrome camera.
Must admit I clicked on this video thinking,, 'oh lets see what the latest opinion on improving photos is....' sceptically, actually very very good advice, refreshingly so, and coincidentally there was a photo I've not developed in post since taking it because it just looked 'wrong' this advice set me on the right path and I'm happy with the result. thanks.
Oh man…I work as a large format printer, and our best looking output is when digitally shot pics have greens turned WAAAAAY down. CMOS Camera sensors have more green receptors for chroma/luma detail but they never print right-unless it’s dialed back. I’m constantly adjusting customer supplied images…
Finally... for the first time in my 47 years as a photographer, 42 as a professional, 24 in digital, and who worked as a news photographer from 1982-2015, as a war photographer for the last 12 of them, and who now teaches photography, you are the FIRST photographer I have heard say what I have known in the digital era. There is a God🙏...lol.
I’d consider myself still an amateur and I’m red-green colorblind but I’ve been addressing my oranges and greens like this for a couple years now so thank you for this much needed ego boost haha
Very elegant in it's simple method! This was one of the issues they had to solve with the Technicolor system - they piddled around with the dyes in the transfer process to drop the green and red/orange that the dyes in the negative emulsion (essentially panchromatic B&W film) responded to a given wavelength band. Hence, you altered the color by changing the base points of CYMK dyes in the dye transfer process to match color test shots.
Oranges and greens are problem for anything going to commercial print, because oranges and greens can't be printed well using a standard 4colour process print. Oranges often turn into muddy browns, greens into mushy greys, especially tiny foliage. That is why there was a fad to over-saturate them, and that fad still remains in many generic digital colour profiles, including RAW, and people are puppy trained to that ARTIFICIAL look of oranges and greens. With the invention of hexachrome print, they could be kept at a subdued level in original photographs, because two extra colour rasters (orange and green) in hexachrome print will push them enough in print, clarify them where needed by reducing interfering C and K rasters that make them dirty. But the hexachrome is very expensive. However, the damage is already done and it keeps repeating because they are *deliberately boosted* in digital colour profiles.
@@Seimstudios Unfortunately, manufacturers presume regular users won't have access to hi-end printing equipment, but will print photos on cheap, 4-colour home printers. Good photographers, though, must be aware of this.
Not quite sure who ever thought oversaturating those two colors would help the problem. In reality, you simulate the target profile, try to stay within its gamut and play with the rest of the image to make the problematic ones look right in contrast - if they're so important. Hexachrome is so expensive because it´s gone the way of the dodo.
@@on_wheels_80 6-inks printing is available in good inkjet printers too. Then we have 8-inks printers, that have extra inks like light black etc. to improve on details quality, b&w reproduction and the definition of gradients. Etc. With inkjet printing available in many "extra flavours", many colour reproduction problems are solved. However, commercial printing still relies on offset printing of some kind. Having an offset press machine with more than 4 colour stations is expensive. It increases the flexibility, but also, the running cost. Commercial printers then must decide, whether to use stations for the hexachrome, or use them for extra spot-colours, like silver or gold, which also increases the value of final print. If they opt for extra spot colours, because they are always printed after K (black), then the 4-colour image done on C-M-Y-K stations must be boosted in greens and oranges, and that is what all generic colour profiles do. However, some critical publications that must deliver on colour accuracy, where printed material must match real objects as close as possible (computer screens can't do that), then they can't avoid commitment, and then must use hexachrome offset print.
I have to admit, I really like the over-saturation of greens that you get from modern digital sensors. Bright, vivid greens (and blue) just scream "joy" to me. But the surreal electric colours are definitely overdone. I know I overdo them. The result is that I usually end up with 3 very different drafts of my photos: Surreal colour explosion, muted, and surreal moody, and I can never tell which version I think is my favourite. Depends on my mood, probably.
Personally I rare do versions of an edit. If you don't know what you want it's a sign that you did not have visualization and are not commmited to an image. There are time to go extreme and it can work but it's if you have that focus and know why you are doing it. And you would rarely want to overdrive orange and green in the same photo
There is a colorist/cinematographer whose work that I like named Tom Bolles. He's very good at what he does and isn't afraid of saturation. In his work it doesn't bother me like it does in the intentionally oversaturated example photo you showed. Obviously he is working with larger budgets than a portrait photographer so lighting is a big part of it, but he isn't afraid of hard light and saturation and that is what I love about his work. I think the reason that it works is because there is more hard light in his work and there is more of a "dense," "rich" feeling to the color palette. Any suggestions on how to achieve this?
Yes but don't confuse shadow and contrast intensity with over driving color. A lot of Toms work is very warm or blue. But he's likely doing just what we're talking about here. You can have bold colors, but you can't drive all colors hard. He has some colors mutes on most of the work you see on his site.
@@Seimstudios So to get the denser colors is it a combination of saturation and luminance? Is he saturating the colors and pulling the luminance down? I think Tom has shot on proper cinema film stocks as well so it could be that some of his portfolio has images from a dense film negative. When you say overdriving colors what do you mean? The way I understand it contrast also changes saturation unless you untether them with something like a bleach bypass.
Great. Ya I always have a go to preset in my Power Workflow pack for that kind of lighting. But in the end your oranges reds and yellows are key there.
I can’t believe this came up on my recommended videos. I’ve just started with learning to adjust digital photos, as well as getting into film photography. I have been editing photos of bees on bushes. I kept thinking that there’s too much green, that it’s overpowering! Thank you for this, I’m going to go back and redo those pictures tomorrow with your suggestions. 🙏
HSL has a huge problem: it doesn't know how to mix colors, it is so selective with green that if you have an out-of-focus background where green grass and cyan water mix, HSL will break the transition zone, generating two perfectly defined blocks of color. It is extremely unnatural and ruins the whole point of the tool. They are like Clarity halos, but with color instead of light.
This has nothing to do with focus and only do with how the color transition to another tone/ The key is to balance the slider above and below. This happens more in advanced or custom color in LR. You have to be careful how you feather off the color transition. I deal with this in the extreme in Filmist presets and spend hours tinkering to dial it in to work on any image.
@@Seimstudios I hope you can make a video or short talking about this problem and how to deal with it. Because I like your video, but I see this problem when I try HSL in my photos
I literally discovered this by accident this morning colour correcting a digital render of people in a forest. I took down the orange a little and the green a lot and suddenly it looked real. It’s brilliant.
Bravo! It's a good lesson: 15 days ago I took some portraits in a private condition of the President of the Italian Republic, in a meadow with some plants where there was a strong green dominant. I shot with a Canon 6d helped by a flash and ISO 160. To obtain the tone closest to the Kodak Portra I desaturated the green and attenuated the orange as you advised without other adjustments
This is really fascinating. I dialed down the green in a test photo and it did look more natural. I Googled an image of a Canon camera sensor diagram and it showed a block of pixels: Red - 9 pixels, Blue - 4 pixels, Green - 12 pixels! No wonder green is so prominent.
The "green pixels" on the Bayer filter double those of the other colors because the "green cone cells' in the retina cover almost all the visible spectrum. Yes it is for a lot of circumstances advisable to reduce the background when you want to stress the foreground subject, independent of colors, structures or what so ever. But if you have e.g. a person yellingly red dressed there could not be too much green and that green must not be reduced or an orange admidst green leaves... Look at paintings of Cezanne or van Gogh or Nolde...
It's always nice to be reminded of subjectivity, like I was while watching this. I really don't like the look of the images you used as examples, I would personally never edit a photo to look like any of the ones you showed in the first 3min. Does that mean they're bad pictures, or that you're a bad photographer? Nope, but it definitely reinforces the fact that opinions and tastes very by a lot. The advice itself is good, just thought it's interesting how wildly different the end product can be while using the same advice.
This is very true. I was looking at some landscape shots I had taken and noticed that certain colors (like greens) were quite saturated in comparison to most other colors (and this is without any editing just importing into LR with a Neutral or flat profile) and it's something I'm now looking for (really just colors that are more saturated than the others coming out of camera )and dealing with those first and then going on with my edits.
Thank you. This is great. Just one thing, are you adjusting by 'numbers' or visuals, 'cos it does rather rely on the monitor and output to be accurate. What colour profile do you use? Great advice. Thank you.
The voice of common sense; so many photographers in post-process cannot delineate between a Digital & Analogue Film - & therein lies the lack of understanding in the characteristics of both; I shoot mostly monochrome, but this advice still applies - one has to recognise tonal & shade rendition to appreciate this dynamic. Short & sweet (solid) advice.
I shoot mainly Fuji and have tested this in mind in my LR C1 review series here on the channel. With current versions C1 has no real advance over LR for Fuji files, not even in noise. But in the ens I say use whatever is to your liking.
I almost never leave comments. Thanks for the incredible advice, I made that simple change to two of "my best" works and the tone is completely changed. I might have to go back and edit every raw I've ever shared ahaha. Cheers mate, 1+ for me
Fantastic thanks. Just posted a new video with how drop color works on B&W. Check it out. You can sub my email list on my site to get more of this stuff.
I've been learning myself that if you want a color to stand out more, increasing saturation isn't always thr move. Sometimes it will actually look more impactful if you tweak something else like reducing the luminance
I...ive been doing this for years. I didn't understand what i what doing, only that adding by subtracting seemed yo help me emulate more filmic look of my peers using, well, film. I especially do it with greens. When i learned to "not get too crazy with it" i noticed i was getting results I liked a lot more.
Exactly. It was not until I started actually doing film tests to make Filmist that I realized how bad it was. Now I just tell people use a film look as your baseline always and then go from there so you stay grounded.
This is a great tip and will be super helpful for newer photographers. Good stuff! Personally, I've shot film and digital and don't see one as better than the other. I don't do the appeal to tradition thing. It's just a different look and style. In fact, the other day I was watching Moonrise Kingdom which is a movie by Wes Anderson that's shot on film. There's a number of shots where skin tones are in the Cheetos dust territory like the example you show in the video. It all comes down to what you want to express with the photo... the story.
I see many Nikon/Sony photographers struggling with those crazy orange skin tones... it's something what the image processor of those cameras do.. so the orange ("sepia") skin comes from that, I guess. Besides that, I do actually tone down the saturation of oranges at times, but when I use Classic Chrome sim, I don't actually need to... same goes with greens, but when I use Provia or Reala Ace, I would move down saturation, and lighten the oranges a bit
It's really every camera. Classic Chrome is just an in camera preset doing what we see here. But this problem is equally true on Fuji. I never bake in a look on my Fuji and if I add Classic Chrome (superia 200) I do it after using the Filmist preset so I have more control.
@@Seimstudios I shoot RAW and apply film sim afterwards. I overall agree with what you're saying, I'm just saying that it's the best with CC because it already tones down saturation of oranges without touching anything in LR. If you try swapping between CC and ProNeg, you will see that in CC skin tones immediately become more pink-ish and less saturated. For white ppl skin colour it's more true to life in my experience, while I like other colours more in RealaAce, but then I _have to_ do exactly what you describe in your video.
Had a question since you were using Olympus cameras and you can dial down the green and the control panel. Can you do that? Have you tried that and is that better than having to bring it in to Lightroom or any other program where you can just do it in camera?
I have Fuji and Sony mostly. Most camera you can adjust color in camera but it's not near as preside and it generally wont effect your RAW file as a RAW is RAW and unedited. It usually only effects a JPEG in which case you;'re throwing away most quality and control anyways,.
When you apply color theory from classical painting, to photography, you can think in terms of depth, yellows and greens, blues and oranges, how and why we perceive things the way we do from a distance. The more information you pile on,, the more cluttered and 2D it will appear. The color wheel applies to photo images too when editing. In the sense that, color influences composition and vice versa, And how you can create more depth without making something look fake. You have to also take into account the character of your camera sensor and color science (I do) some cameras have nice blues with some magentas, some have terrible greens etc,,(I have different camera's for different type of images) but indeed, you build up from less to more, from background to foreground ... I do alot using luminescence, exposure, contrast, highlights, whites, curve (and perhaps a dial or two in the camera itself) to get a workflow going. ... now for B&W if do use presets or film styles,, because I'm not very good at consistently tuning and being aware, of what to look for, and to get the most out of each image, it's hard, the way information presents itself in tone values and contrast , I always doubt myself ,,, I can apply basic correction of course, but to get a consistent style and workflow and shoot beautiful images (you need a camera also with nice transition and microgradation) ,, anyway :-)
Great idea! I've been editing and outputting images for decades and today the lack of investment in decent displays, a controlled working environment and the lousy pads, laptops and phones makes it a devolution in tge end result.
The last thing I want is a filmic look. Portra and Velvia were particularly revolting. In digital. the application of a small amount of saturation reduction is all that's needed.
Porta is the film that works on everything. If you though it was r revolting something went wrong in your process. But I know each has their look. Just don't only drop satiation. Use correct drop color methods like I showed last month here on the channel.
This is most evident in cinematography, which is often shot and lit in just two colours. Totally unnaturalistic, but highly credible as a storytelling tool.
Often when we think of a “raw image” we’re actually thinking of an image with color correction and gamma applied in accordance to some factory profile that has nothing really to do with what was captured, but rather what the manufacturer considers accurate and appealing. If you look at digital raw files without any color correction applied at all it is overwhelmingly green - to the point it visually appears monochrome. This is because color temperature (and gamma, which is linear directly off the sensor) are applied post-exposure. The green bias is because green is in the center of the visual color spectrum, so by biasing toward green you have the greatest range of color sensitivity regardless of lighting. Likewise the sensor itself (behind the mask) is naturally more sensitive to red and infrared. As a result reds tend to get more exposure. It’s for these reasons I don’t even trust exposure warnings or histograms in camera. They’re wildly inaccurate often pointing to over exposure a solid 1-2 stops under.
Kodachrome 25- late 1970s- celebrated film. Strongly saturated brilliant and deep reds and yellows, less saturated aqua blues, flat , dark murky greens.
Yeah I’ve noticed this Nikon and Sony have loads of green, Fujifilm X-Trans sensors do have very subdued greens, very close t how loads of film stocks work.
Fuji RAW files have the same problem. What you're noticing is the film profile from the camera you're using being loaded in LR or C1 or baked in in camera (bad ideas FYI). Nothing wrong with these profiles but I always remove them and use a preset in their place so I have more control.
I do a lot of cosplay photography and my job is to oversaturate a lot in Red, Blue and green, and a little bit in orange, but its also important to add luminance. There is a very thin balance between vivid and oversaturated. Most people in this genre add way too much orange and they dont guard their white balance. Resulting photos are gold-yellowish with unnatural colors on people. When its done wrong, orange or purple leaks all around into whites. But i did a lot of fantasy photos in forest and keeping green in check as you do is a usual thing to do. If you still want vivid look, play add a little bit of saturation on yellows.
Honestly most cosplay photos are done badly. I get a more stylized look is popular. But these same methods apply equally. Cosplay does not inherently need to be supersaturated. In fact the photographer that stand out are the ones that don't try and copy all the newbies shooting cosplay events. That said you can still use this method or a film look, then push overall saturation as needed. As always. Start with a solid film base and go from there and you will always win. Some iconoc older films like Kodachronme 64 or 1940's Afga would be amazing on cosplay. I use these often from Filmist when I want a stylized look
Yep. When you have a multidisciplinary background, photography is a totally different experience. I cant imagine not knowing how to compose an image both for structure and colour without really having to think about it.
That useful. But it should be noted that this is not WB and the channels should still be used. WB will change the hue of colors but not it's saturation or luma value as shown here,
@@Seimstudioscompletely agree, just mentioned it because Olympus seems to get that those two colours are very important to make better images. Cheers!
There seems to be two trains of thought in this video. One being that separation between your prominent colors is important. Which is true, understanding that makes a huge difference when approaching a photo. The other is that this is somehow more accurate to film. Which is questionable. Which stock? What processes used to develop? There are plenty of film stocks that do highly saturate colors, greens, reds, yellows, etc. Tonal compression in film is important. But this is seemingly misrepresented here.
It's the same train. These two channels don't make a film look, they are just something we can learn from film. I deal with nearly every stock in my Filmist presets which I also mentioned. No film pushes greens and oranges like this. It's not the nature of film. I spend hundreds of hours refining film stocks. Most of my film looks do implement this tip in some way because film has more organic color. But this trick alone will not emulate any given film stock. I spend countless hours getting those dialed in.
Yes but s style is not the same as doing something because you don't know better. The goal of digital was never to look pretend and overdone. It's juts a lack of understating in editing.
Hysterical. I do the same general thing. The sats are just a bit too high by default, esp with turning off LR trying to bump up sat. It will be interesting as photo tools build in AI whether we will see sat turn down for non-essential objects.
How do I do this on Capture One? Over there there is no color sliders but a color selection. And if I remember correctly that doesn't change the color channel but the color you see. I might be wrong, please help.
The hardest feedback to give is feedback that's not quick or instant to implement. People typically don't want to hear that they need to learn to see colour, and prefer things like set it to 5600k, use a pro mist, use my presets/recipe. You're fighting an uphill battle in those forums, man. God speed. 🙏
People want an easy pill. They should use presets because it will always make you faster and help you understand color better. But people nee to understand it not just fix it in Ai lol
You are basically emulating color-density with the luminance slider on green, which is a good thing... I'm actually editing my photos in a very cumbersome process in resolve, with a lot of tricks I learned from grading, including color density :)
Yes, for orange he seems to be emulating color density. Apparently, on film saturated colors come out darker than they actually should do. But for green he seems to be doing the opposite. i.e. reducing saturation and luminance at the same time. This is weird.
@@simonpayne7994 that’s true although his argument is that digital sensors overproduce the saturation of green channels, which I think is true for Bayer matrix sensors (so almost all modern cameras)
@@jan-k7x1c I would not think so. The two green fields permit better results for green, the primary color of an RGB system that humans see as being brightest. Many coding systems use more bits for green than for red or blue. No software engineer would be silly enough to incorrectly represent one of the primary colors that go into an additive mix to emulate all the others.
I know that CMOS bayer pattern has RGGB photosites and all that. But could it not be that in reality. It's the film that gets it wrong. But we just prefer the wrongness of film because it enhances skin tones?
Interesting idea but no. People are not orange and greens don't look like they do on most digital edits. Film is much closer to real life even though each film is unique. Digital I think is at the RAW level is more equal on color levels, but the result after pushing them is they they are too much in many cases.
Why are people chasing after the "filmic look" all of a sudden? Where does that fad come from? I agree people oversature too much. We all did that in the beginning.
IMO because digital is open ended and options paralysis is really unsatisfying. Bad digital editing can make a decent photo look awful, so being restricted to something that doesn't violate photochemistry is refreshing
THis video is not about a Filmist look. That said. FIlmic looks are long past being a fad. It's a way to ground your edits and I have yet to see a photographer regardless of experaince level that does not improve their work with some accurate film presets. That's why I invest more into my film pack research wise than anything else. Film stocks spend million or getting good color, digital; is just a RAW with all color the same and always will need a process.
I'm gonnna be honest: I'm like what @jergoes said up top. I was not expecting anything. I thought, Oh well. It'll be entertaining." But when I saw what you did, I went "ohhhhhhh," opened up lightroom, and uh, yeah. That's pretty much it. Too much green. Got it. ;)
I can't stand the over saturation of all the in camera picture styles so created my own with 2 of the 3 custom spots with one for landscape and the other for portraits and both are as far negative as can go(-3) and for the most part after a lot of experimenting believe it or not ended up dialed in to a very good starting point and yes I'm aware what you see on the rear is a jpeg but thats what i save images as anyway once fully edited
Reminds me of when people use those photo booths in cvs tonprint thier digital pictures. Everyone looks like they're sunburnt to hell and the greens and blues have been squashed. It upsets my stomach.
Those four sliders indeed do a lot. However, digital sensors per se are a whole lot more true to real life now than any film ever was, especially negative. Any distortion can be dealt with a profile now that's made in a matter of minutes. Screens have become heaps and bounds more capable than any sort of printing ever was, except resolution. What you describe are all physical constraints (non-linear highlight rolloff and halation, e.g.) and technical limitations of the past - not some intentional quality. Sure, if one prefers the look, by all means, go for it. I just don't see it objectively superior and the whole film simulation trend is probably just another fad that will go by. I prefer to see images and movies that embrace what's possible today, not whatever inferior methods we've been used to in the past.
I used to tink film sims were a fad. Because my customers wanted them I made the most complete and accurate film sim pack. The result if having such understanding of film is why I'm able to make these video. Sensors are capable of being very true to life. But they way files are being edited is not at all, hence the problem and the solution in this video which is just a profile. I've yet to find a photographer that does not improve his edits by using film inspired baselines. Digital tends to have too much of everything often that shows. Film color has generally better skin tones and more balance. Hence using it's inspiration as a direct preset as in Filmist or just as a reminding guide as in this example is invaluable.
I thought all the heavy greens were that way because I read years ago that was how Japanese (Nikon) normally see. I have been fixing foliage for years. Leica seems to be a more true green but still needs.
@@Seimstudios Because it's not true. Every manufacturer has their own colour science based on whatever look they're going for and the sensor technology they're using, it has nothing to do with how Japanese see vs German. The strong greens come from half the pixels on a Bayer sensor being green, so there's more information in the green channel. Hasselblad's colour science's goal is to reduce saturation and create as neutral as possible a file, Sony wants lots of contrast and saturation, Canon likes overly orange skin tones, Leica changes their mind with every, single, camera. They all have different goals SOOC, but everything can obviously be tuned to taste with raw files.
Is this "cinematic", "cinematographic", manually focused lens/camera, ... - talk not just a distraction? Why should I care if someone took a photo with a film camera? Is that supposed to be an excuse for bad pictures, lack of composition, etc.? And why should I pretend that I used a film camera, when I used a digital camera?
True, but atmosphere and feeling do matter a lot. Check out some of my recent videos on pictorialism. Perfect photos can be made in an instant with Ai. Photos with soul can only be made by us.
Except for your own enlightenment you shouldn't care how someone took an image. If you think that you shouldn't pretend to that you used a film camera instead of a digital or visa versa then don't. I will say that because of the logistics involved with film photography today I can understand why a digital photographer would want to be able to duplicate a film look.
Because there is truth to the idea that analogue does not violate the physics of light and photochemistry, whereas digital occasionally does. Brains can spot the difference
@@RohannvanRensburg There are processes with film and there processes with digital. They clearly produce different results, however there is no truth. There are just too many variables and we should not forget that there is, was and forever will be and endless stream of awesome and awful photography with both processes.
Yes my mistake. Meant saturation. That's where I recommend starting. Then jump into luma and and hue as needed. I almost always pull luma down on greens for better separation of colors.
Maybe i would be handy to just shoot digital in the first place, showing analog foto`s in a completely digital environment is kind of silly in my opinion. Kind of defeats the purpose, I think this kind of prooves the insanity behind the new anolog craze.
I agree 99 people don’t really give one, fifty years ago on one of my many Hasselblads and color printing my pictures I would be hard pushed to get better portraits than on my iPhone 15, just my limited observation.
I still shoot film often and it's because of the tests I do with it that I realized what I show today. Even so film even scanned teaches me something every time and makes me a better photographer. My shelf is still full of film cameras.
@@peterclemmet You`re right, analog was plain bad back in the day. Shot many rolls and had to rely on development for result, very expensive too. Almost always dissapointed. When digital came i bought it right away, what an improvement, i never looked back. I`m quite amazed by the analog insanity on youtube. Crazy.
No C1 has the same problem. If you have a camera loading a film profile by default like a FUJI for example you may be seeing this more film like look. But I always remove those and use Film Standard profile and put a preset in their place so I have more control.
Still can't figure out why people want to have the film look back. It was a horrible material falling short on nearly everything and people want the look back?
This tells me you have not used accurate film tools. I don't know what film you shot, but your statement makes no sense. If most new photographers used film baselines/presets their photos would be 2x better right our of the gate.
@@Seimstudios Ilfords, Kodak, Fuji, what ever served the purpose. Agnostic. I can't count the rolls I've shot and still have some undeveloped in the attic. Alongside with my darkroom equipment. In my experience everything below medium format was simple not sufficient enough to produce large prints. And even then it was a matter of nailing the exposure. Required some experience, especially in product photography. Some material was more forgiving than other. Dia film wasn't my friend. Nowadays we have incredible detailed photos but people don't care about details and ask for the look. They simply forgot that a 35mm ISO 400 negative looks grainy as hell on a A4 sized print. Not to mention fine arts.
Eh, well there's been so many different types of film over the years, seems like you're going for an Agfa look with this but that's not a universal thing for film. Kodak Gold is a good example of a film that over-saturates orange in skin. I do agree that digital cameras way over saturate green though. One thing that people seem to forget is that some films were much better at capturing subtle gradation differences in colours which digital isn't great at but depending on your film stock, it could also push slightly different shades to be similar or completely off. My point being, there's no "film look", there's been hundreds of different films that react to colour and light in very different ways and none are what anyone would consider correct, it's just a matter of taste. Frankly though, you can edit the colours of that portrait till the cows come home, it's still a poor composition and an awkward pose.
Yes and no. I'm not saying the drop cool makes a film look. I make the what is probably most accurate film pack. I know more about film colors than almost anyone. We're not doing early Agfa looks here as they are much more extreme. You'kk find them in FIlmist. Kodak Gold (which also does this). Nearly all films have this organic green and orange drop in common. Not as an effect, but because it's correct color. What digital is creating is where the problem comes in. Then again since you're also saying this is poor composition and an awkward pose to pretent I don't know what I'm doing lol, I can only assume you're trolling since this photo clearly is neither. Peace.
@@Seimstudios I'm not trolling, but I do find it interesting that the premise of your video is criticizing how people edit colours, when you're not open to criticism yourself. I agree that most film types reproduce more realistic greens but I disagree about the drop in orange, some films accentuate/exaggerate warm colours. I'm not sure what you mean about "correct colour" though, as I've never seen a film stock that produces completely accurate colours across an image, so "correct" would be subjective. Printing/scanning can also affect colour and contrast, which is part of the reason it's impossible to make an accurate film look preset, even if you're working with a single digital camera that you've profiled as a base.
5:44 that's why film looks so good: I will argue that. Film look so good because we were looking at film for generations, 100 years. It's hard-coded in our subconscious. It is the look that is with us for generations it is passed by our genes from our ancestors. But why film is like that? Because the white chemistry works. They could not saturate colors more than it could. But some color on film are way more saturated than digital. That is why making film look out from a digital is always worse than having a film. We are truncating things. The same goes when we are shooting film in 2024 but then from the film moment we are truncating that the digital. In the end we are emulating some emotions. And with digital we have 100%: we can't go beyond that. So if you want that particular color stand out, we must subdue all others. In particular red color is very hard to reproduce in digital the same way as in film because of chemistry. When sunlight hits the paper the red color shines completely different way than when we observe the red color on a screen. We will maybe achieve the same effect when we will have artificial light that will be close to what the Sun is. For now the most screens are lit by LED dead are faking white color.
Interesting point but I don't agree. Yes we are use to the aesthetic of film. I used to be the same away about emulating film until I dug in and made a system that did it well. I now realize it was just an excuse. Film based colors make digital editing so much better. The truth is the film color is more true. People are not orange and greens don't look like people are making them look in digital. I've never seen someone that really started using accurate film profiles that did not improve their editing process. It gives us a baseline of what is organic and natural.
@@Seimstudios my digital cameras (Pentax) does not make people orange. Skin colors are true. I just watched few film shot movies on Netflix (80') and colors are superb because they are BALANCED and rich not because they are subdued. Cheap digital screams RGB colors (especially monitors!!!!) and if calibrated and or used on high end screens different story. Most emulations (I don't know yours) make crap out of images on good device, since they are made to work on overbright cheap screens. Latest VISION3 film is near 'digital' in its colors and ARRI digital cameras are near film (or better way beyond film in contrast, DR and gamut). We agree that most people just punch vibrance and sat, and THAT makes people orange. It was THE SAME with film if saturation was artificially boosted in post production, even more so since film has much less DR per channel (layer) to work with, so balance is achieved in much narrower exposure windows than digital (see slide film, miss it for 1 fstop and is ruined). Digital is way more.linear and we are not used to see linear since in our eyes there is all sorts of 'compression' going on, as well as masking, to see HDR. But not as those HDR tools that were popular 10 years ago with awful overcooked result. Yes analog look is very delicate. Digital is here a good 20 years trying to nail it. Film was there 100 years trying the same. But biology had a million years and more to perfect it. It is what we see, not what it is. With digital we must trick our eyes to emulate what our brain think we should see. First of all we must figure out display that will resemble nature then we can talk. But until displays work on additive color mixing and nature on subtractive color mixing, we're comparing apples to potatoes.
Well I'm a Fuji shooter so I can say easily that Your statement is only partly true since the Fuji profiles are not real film simulation. They are decent though but you're much better off shooting RAw and adding a film simulation after. Even if I'm using classic neg I;'ll add it in post with a preset not in camera because the quality will be better.
I learned this concept from using film. But it alone is not a film look. Yry it in some real film looks, grab my FREE Filmist 2 presets min pack here... seimeffects.com/filmist
I have read that digital is more like shooting with slide film than with negative film.
@@tayloriginals999 That’s correct because viewing digital images is usually done on a computer screen, which is a transmissive medium, vs viewing prints like contact sheets(remember them?)which is a reflective medium.
If you read a an oil painting color theory book (Munsell Student Guide) this is a principle that is important for painting. I call it the 80/20 rule. What that means is, an artist needs to identify the most prominent color they want the viewer to see. That color is higher in chroma (intensity) and can make up NO MORE than 20% of the surface area. The other colors are all lower chroma, or more neutralized because they are acting in support of the main color. Those neutrals are to make up the 80% of the surface area. This is what drives the viewers eye to what the artist wants them to look at.
This is almost exactly what you did here and you can make it work for almost any visual medium. It just takes a little bit of observation and thought to determine WHAT you want your work to portray to your viewer. It can be used with any color combination as well. Learn the color wheel, identify main color, subjugate the rest of them.
Exactly. All things must lead to the subject so if we compete for att with it, we lose.
Take it one step further and shoot in black and white! You’ll learn to be a better photographer, as you’re looking at contrast elements that you want to put in the photo. The study of light and shadows will simplify your vision results. Color creates a very busy environment, therefore your images can never match what you learn from black-and-white.
From there, you can bring in color when it’s apposite!
God tips. You can also reduce saturation in yellow because green plants have lots of yellow in then.
@@simon359color affects black and white and orange filters used to be used on lenses with black and white film to do exactly what he did.
@@moustachio334
I used to own an orange filter just for that reason, but nothing replaces Fuji built-in Acros! Unless you want to spend money on a monochrome camera.
Must admit I clicked on this video thinking,, 'oh lets see what the latest opinion on improving photos is....' sceptically, actually very very good advice, refreshingly so, and coincidentally there was a photo I've not developed in post since taking it because it just looked 'wrong' this advice set me on the right path and I'm happy with the result. thanks.
After watching 1000 irrelevant videos on editing photos, I've found this gem. Thank you!
Glad it helped. Check out the follow up on how this works on B&W
This video just gained you a new subscriber because instead of click bait it's actually great advice. Thanks
Oh man…I work as a large format printer, and our best looking output is when digitally shot pics have greens turned WAAAAAY down. CMOS Camera sensors have more green receptors for chroma/luma detail but they never print right-unless it’s dialed back. I’m constantly adjusting customer supplied images…
Why do you think? Compression? Bitrate?
Finally... for the first time in my 47 years as a photographer, 42 as a professional, 24 in digital, and who worked as a news photographer from 1982-2015, as a war photographer for the last 12 of them, and who now teaches photography, you are the FIRST photographer I have heard say what I have known in the digital era. There is a God🙏...lol.
Thanks, keep going. We will teach them one day. Knowing actual photography today is like being a wizard with lost secrets.
I’d consider myself still an amateur and I’m red-green colorblind but I’ve been addressing my oranges and greens like this for a couple years now so thank you for this much needed ego boost haha
I’m an independent filmmaker - I just subscribed to you after seeing this video - thank you for the great advice.
Awesome! Thank you!
Very elegant in it's simple method! This was one of the issues they had to solve with the Technicolor system - they piddled around with the dyes in the transfer process to drop the green and red/orange that the dyes in the negative emulsion (essentially panchromatic B&W film) responded to a given wavelength band. Hence, you altered the color by changing the base points of CYMK dyes in the dye transfer process to match color test shots.
Oranges and greens are problem for anything going to commercial print, because oranges and greens can't be printed well using a standard 4colour process print. Oranges often turn into muddy browns, greens into mushy greys, especially tiny foliage. That is why there was a fad to over-saturate them, and that fad still remains in many generic digital colour profiles, including RAW, and people are puppy trained to that ARTIFICIAL look of oranges and greens. With the invention of hexachrome print, they could be kept at a subdued level in original photographs, because two extra colour rasters (orange and green) in hexachrome print will push them enough in print, clarify them where needed by reducing interfering C and K rasters that make them dirty. But the hexachrome is very expensive. However, the damage is already done and it keeps repeating because they are *deliberately boosted* in digital colour profiles.
Yes, and the smartphone era photos. But we can undo it. Softer colors are actually more pleasing and even non photographers notice.
@@Seimstudios Unfortunately, manufacturers presume regular users won't have access to hi-end printing equipment, but will print photos on cheap, 4-colour home printers. Good photographers, though, must be aware of this.
Not quite sure who ever thought oversaturating those two colors would help the problem. In reality, you simulate the target profile, try to stay within its gamut and play with the rest of the image to make the problematic ones look right in contrast - if they're so important.
Hexachrome is so expensive because it´s gone the way of the dodo.
Man why have I never heard this before? Thank you!
@@on_wheels_80 6-inks printing is available in good inkjet printers too. Then we have 8-inks printers, that have extra inks like light black etc. to improve on details quality, b&w reproduction and the definition of gradients. Etc. With inkjet printing available in many "extra flavours", many colour reproduction problems are solved. However, commercial printing still relies on offset printing of some kind. Having an offset press machine with more than 4 colour stations is expensive. It increases the flexibility, but also, the running cost. Commercial printers then must decide, whether to use stations for the hexachrome, or use them for extra spot-colours, like silver or gold, which also increases the value of final print. If they opt for extra spot colours, because they are always printed after K (black), then the 4-colour image done on C-M-Y-K stations must be boosted in greens and oranges, and that is what all generic colour profiles do. However, some critical publications that must deliver on colour accuracy, where printed material must match real objects as close as possible (computer screens can't do that), then they can't avoid commitment, and then must use hexachrome offset print.
I have to admit, I really like the over-saturation of greens that you get from modern digital sensors. Bright, vivid greens (and blue) just scream "joy" to me. But the surreal electric colours are definitely overdone. I know I overdo them. The result is that I usually end up with 3 very different drafts of my photos: Surreal colour explosion, muted, and surreal moody, and I can never tell which version I think is my favourite.
Depends on my mood, probably.
Personally I rare do versions of an edit. If you don't know what you want it's a sign that you did not have visualization and are not commmited to an image.
There are time to go extreme and it can work but it's if you have that focus and know why you are doing it. And you would rarely want to overdrive orange and green in the same photo
There is a colorist/cinematographer whose work that I like named Tom Bolles. He's very good at what he does and isn't afraid of saturation. In his work it doesn't bother me like it does in the intentionally oversaturated example photo you showed. Obviously he is working with larger budgets than a portrait photographer so lighting is a big part of it, but he isn't afraid of hard light and saturation and that is what I love about his work. I think the reason that it works is because there is more hard light in his work and there is more of a "dense," "rich" feeling to the color palette. Any suggestions on how to achieve this?
Yes but don't confuse shadow and contrast intensity with over driving color. A lot of Toms work is very warm or blue. But he's likely doing just what we're talking about here. You can have bold colors, but you can't drive all colors hard. He has some colors mutes on most of the work you see on his site.
@@Seimstudios So to get the denser colors is it a combination of saturation and luminance? Is he saturating the colors and pulling the luminance down? I think Tom has shot on proper cinema film stocks as well so it could be that some of his portfolio has images from a dense film negative.
When you say overdriving colors what do you mean? The way I understand it contrast also changes saturation unless you untether them with something like a bleach bypass.
I cannot thank you enough for this. I had completely unrelated problem with interior lighting and this solved it (just in yellow department).
Great. Ya I always have a go to preset in my Power Workflow pack for that kind of lighting. But in the end your oranges reds and yellows are key there.
Brilliant, Gav. I love how these videos combine the artistic with the technical. Great stuff.
Many thanks Matt
I can’t believe this came up on my recommended videos. I’ve just started with learning to adjust digital photos, as well as getting into film photography. I have been editing photos of bees on bushes. I kept thinking that there’s too much green, that it’s overpowering! Thank you for this, I’m going to go back and redo those pictures tomorrow with your suggestions. 🙏
Enjoy, it makes a big differnce.
HSL has a huge problem: it doesn't know how to mix colors, it is so selective with green that if you have an out-of-focus background where green grass and cyan water mix, HSL will break the transition zone, generating two perfectly defined blocks of color. It is extremely unnatural and ruins the whole point of the tool. They are like Clarity halos, but with color instead of light.
This has nothing to do with focus and only do with how the color transition to another tone/ The key is to balance the slider above and below. This happens more in advanced or custom color in LR. You have to be careful how you feather off the color transition. I deal with this in the extreme in Filmist presets and spend hours tinkering to dial it in to work on any image.
@@Seimstudios I hope you can make a video or short talking about this problem and how to deal with it. Because I like your video, but I see this problem when I try HSL in my photos
I literally discovered this by accident this morning colour correcting a digital render of people in a forest. I took down the orange a little and the green a lot and suddenly it looked real. It’s brilliant.
It's magic
I actually did this just instinctually, it’s nice to have it explained in a video 😁 it always just looked nice to me
Bravo! It's a good lesson: 15 days ago I took some portraits in a private condition of the President of the Italian Republic, in a meadow with some plants where there was a strong green dominant. I shot with a Canon 6d helped by a flash and ISO 160. To obtain the tone closest to the Kodak Portra I desaturated the green and attenuated the orange as you advised without other adjustments
Very cool. FYI Portra 160 is free in my FIlmist Sampler pack and is VERY accurate. I shoot Portra regularly to keep improving it.
This is really fascinating. I dialed down the green in a test photo and it did look more natural. I Googled an image of a Canon camera sensor diagram and it showed a block of pixels: Red - 9 pixels, Blue - 4 pixels, Green - 12 pixels! No wonder green is so prominent.
Finally, some actual good editing advice. Thanks for the video man!
Glad it was helpful!
You are sooo right about this. I actually hate shooting with anything green when shooting. Good info.
The "green pixels" on the Bayer filter double those of the other colors because the "green cone cells' in the retina cover almost all the visible spectrum.
Yes it is for a lot of circumstances advisable to reduce the background when you want to stress the foreground subject, independent of colors, structures or what so ever. But if you have e.g. a person yellingly red dressed there could not be too much green and that green must not be reduced or an orange admidst green leaves...
Look at paintings of Cezanne or van Gogh or Nolde...
It's always nice to be reminded of subjectivity, like I was while watching this. I really don't like the look of the images you used as examples, I would personally never edit a photo to look like any of the ones you showed in the first 3min. Does that mean they're bad pictures, or that you're a bad photographer? Nope, but it definitely reinforces the fact that opinions and tastes very by a lot.
The advice itself is good, just thought it's interesting how wildly different the end product can be while using the same advice.
This is very true. I was looking at some landscape shots I had taken and noticed that certain colors (like greens) were quite saturated in comparison to most other colors (and this is without any editing just importing into LR with a Neutral or flat profile) and it's something I'm now looking for (really just colors that are more saturated than the others coming out of camera )and dealing with those first and then going on with my edits.
Thank you. This is great. Just one thing, are you adjusting by 'numbers' or visuals, 'cos it does rather rely on the monitor and output to be accurate. What colour profile do you use? Great advice. Thank you.
Your monitor should be calibrated once in awhile for sure. Don't fret about RGBs numbers too much, what photography lacks today is feeling.
The voice of common sense; so many photographers in post-process cannot delineate between a Digital & Analogue Film - & therein lies the lack of understanding in the characteristics of both; I shoot mostly monochrome, but this advice still applies - one has to recognise tonal & shade rendition to appreciate this dynamic. Short & sweet (solid) advice.
and if you have fuji camera with x-trans sensor, Capture one is better, and I even found that for my liking is better when editing film scans as well
I shoot mainly Fuji and have tested this in mind in my LR C1 review series here on the channel. With current versions C1 has no real advance over LR for Fuji files, not even in noise. But in the ens I say use whatever is to your liking.
I almost never leave comments. Thanks for the incredible advice, I made that simple change to two of "my best" works and the tone is completely changed. I might have to go back and edit every raw I've ever shared ahaha. Cheers mate, 1+ for me
Fantastic thanks. Just posted a new video with how drop color works on B&W. Check it out. You can sub my email list on my site to get more of this stuff.
So true! Greens are luminous in so many landscape images from the so called pros! Great advice man! New UK sub!
Thanks Jon
Great stuff!!! Going to try it!
I've been learning myself that if you want a color to stand out more, increasing saturation isn't always thr move. Sometimes it will actually look more impactful if you tweak something else like reducing the luminance
Very interesting. Some weeks ago I was experimenting with desaturating green.
It's a game changer
Boom… I agree 100%. Maybe you could show a good way to correct color cast? (Green and Red)?????
You c also do this in HSL but I show my preferred way here... ruclips.net/video/D__nFXBVsp0/видео.htmlsi=VB2Yj_Oja_qRgT_n
This was amazing! Tried with some model photos and also with some mushroom photos and the result was really good! Thank you
I...ive been doing this for years. I didn't understand what i what doing, only that adding by subtracting seemed yo help me emulate more filmic look of my peers using, well, film. I especially do it with greens. When i learned to "not get too crazy with it" i noticed i was getting results I liked a lot more.
Exactly. It was not until I started actually doing film tests to make Filmist that I realized how bad it was. Now I just tell people use a film look as your baseline always and then go from there so you stay grounded.
This is a great tip and will be super helpful for newer photographers. Good stuff!
Personally, I've shot film and digital and don't see one as better than the other. I don't do the appeal to tradition thing. It's just a different look and style. In fact, the other day I was watching Moonrise Kingdom which is a movie by Wes Anderson that's shot on film. There's a number of shots where skin tones are in the Cheetos dust territory like the example you show in the video. It all comes down to what you want to express with the photo... the story.
This is the best! 🎉 Love it, this is what I was looking for!
Glad it was helpful!
Thank you. Worth a suscribe!
Welcome!
I see many Nikon/Sony photographers struggling with those crazy orange skin tones... it's something what the image processor of those cameras do.. so the orange ("sepia") skin comes from that, I guess. Besides that, I do actually tone down the saturation of oranges at times, but when I use Classic Chrome sim, I don't actually need to... same goes with greens, but when I use Provia or Reala Ace, I would move down saturation, and lighten the oranges a bit
It's really every camera. Classic Chrome is just an in camera preset doing what we see here. But this problem is equally true on Fuji. I never bake in a look on my Fuji and if I add Classic Chrome (superia 200) I do it after using the Filmist preset so I have more control.
@@Seimstudios I shoot RAW and apply film sim afterwards. I overall agree with what you're saying, I'm just saying that it's the best with CC because it already tones down saturation of oranges without touching anything in LR. If you try swapping between CC and ProNeg, you will see that in CC skin tones immediately become more pink-ish and less saturated. For white ppl skin colour it's more true to life in my experience, while I like other colours more in RealaAce, but then I _have to_ do exactly what you describe in your video.
Excellent method. Thank you!
Had a question since you were using Olympus cameras and you can dial down the green and the control panel. Can you do that? Have you tried that and is that better than having to bring it in to Lightroom or any other program where you can just do it in camera?
I have Fuji and Sony mostly. Most camera you can adjust color in camera but it's not near as preside and it generally wont effect your RAW file as a RAW is RAW and unedited. It usually only effects a JPEG in which case you;'re throwing away most quality and control anyways,.
Well done, Sir.
When you apply color theory from classical painting, to photography, you can think in terms of depth, yellows and greens, blues and oranges, how and why we perceive things the way we do from a distance. The more information you pile on,, the more cluttered and 2D it will appear. The color wheel applies to photo images too when editing. In the sense that, color influences composition and vice versa, And how you can create more depth without making something look fake. You have to also take into account the character of your camera sensor and color science (I do) some cameras have nice blues with some magentas, some have terrible greens etc,,(I have different camera's for different type of images) but indeed, you build up from less to more, from background to foreground ... I do alot using luminescence, exposure, contrast, highlights, whites, curve (and perhaps a dial or two in the camera itself) to get a workflow going. ... now for B&W if do use presets or film styles,, because I'm not very good at consistently tuning and being aware, of what to look for, and to get the most out of each image, it's hard, the way information presents itself in tone values and contrast , I always doubt myself ,,, I can apply basic correction of course, but to get a consistent style and workflow and shoot beautiful images (you need a camera also with nice transition and microgradation) ,, anyway :-)
Very interesting advice. Is this for portraits or can it be use on landscapes too.
Everything. Just adjust your channel setting depending on your needs
@@Seimstudios thank you. New subs here
Great idea! I've been editing and outputting images for decades and today the lack of investment in decent displays, a controlled working environment and the lousy pads, laptops and phones makes it a devolution in tge end result.
Ah, someone who knows what he's talking about! Subbed.
Thanks
The last thing I want is a filmic look. Portra and Velvia were particularly revolting. In digital. the application of a small amount of saturation reduction is all that's needed.
Porta is the film that works on everything. If you though it was r revolting something went wrong in your process. But I know each has their look. Just don't only drop satiation. Use correct drop color methods like I showed last month here on the channel.
This is most evident in cinematography, which is often shot and lit in just two colours. Totally unnaturalistic, but highly credible as a storytelling tool.
Often when we think of a “raw image” we’re actually thinking of an image with color correction and gamma applied in accordance to some factory profile that has nothing really to do with what was captured, but rather what the manufacturer considers accurate and appealing.
If you look at digital raw files without any color correction applied at all it is overwhelmingly green - to the point it visually appears monochrome.
This is because color temperature (and gamma, which is linear directly off the sensor) are applied post-exposure. The green bias is because green is in the center of the visual color spectrum, so by biasing toward green you have the greatest range of color sensitivity regardless of lighting.
Likewise the sensor itself (behind the mask) is naturally more sensitive to red and infrared. As a result reds tend to get more exposure.
It’s for these reasons I don’t even trust exposure warnings or histograms in camera. They’re wildly inaccurate often pointing to over exposure a solid 1-2 stops under.
Amazing advice! Appreciate you!
Glad it was helpful!
Kodachrome 25- late 1970s- celebrated film. Strongly saturated brilliant and deep reds and yellows, less saturated aqua blues, flat , dark murky greens.
Ya Kodachomes were pretty wild. I have 3 them in my FIlmist pack. I would like some more accurate samples of 25 to get it more dialed in.
Wow. Excellent. Thanks so much.
Glad it was helpful!
Yeah I’ve noticed this Nikon and Sony have loads of green, Fujifilm X-Trans sensors do have very subdued greens, very close t how loads of film stocks work.
Fuji RAW files have the same problem. What you're noticing is the film profile from the camera you're using being loaded in LR or C1 or baked in in camera (bad ideas FYI). Nothing wrong with these profiles but I always remove them and use a preset in their place so I have more control.
I do a lot of cosplay photography and my job is to oversaturate a lot in Red, Blue and green, and a little bit in orange, but its also important to add luminance. There is a very thin balance between vivid and oversaturated.
Most people in this genre add way too much orange and they dont guard their white balance. Resulting photos are gold-yellowish with unnatural colors on people. When its done wrong, orange or purple leaks all around into whites.
But i did a lot of fantasy photos in forest and keeping green in check as you do is a usual thing to do. If you still want vivid look, play add a little bit of saturation on yellows.
Honestly most cosplay photos are done badly. I get a more stylized look is popular. But these same methods apply equally. Cosplay does not inherently need to be supersaturated. In fact the photographer that stand out are the ones that don't try and copy all the newbies shooting cosplay events. That said you can still use this method or a film look, then push overall saturation as needed.
As always. Start with a solid film base and go from there and you will always win. Some iconoc older films like Kodachronme 64 or 1940's Afga would be amazing on cosplay. I use these often from Filmist when I want a stylized look
Yep. When you have a multidisciplinary background, photography is a totally different experience. I cant imagine not knowing how to compose an image both for structure and colour without really having to think about it.
Olympus gets this. The white balance fine tune is two colours, amber and green.
That useful. But it should be noted that this is not WB and the channels should still be used. WB will change the hue of colors but not it's saturation or luma value as shown here,
@@Seimstudioscompletely agree, just mentioned it because Olympus seems to get that those two colours are very important to make better images. Cheers!
Thanks so much for this man, really cool tip!🙏
Glad you enjoyed.
Best damn advice ever. I used to work in a little schlocky portrait studio. One day we went digital, horrifying. There too. But. There is still film.
Thanks.Ya they can be pretty bad. But they are easy to fix.
There seems to be two trains of thought in this video.
One being that separation between your prominent colors is important. Which is true, understanding that makes a huge difference when approaching a photo.
The other is that this is somehow more accurate to film. Which is questionable. Which stock? What processes used to develop? There are plenty of film stocks that do highly saturate colors, greens, reds, yellows, etc.
Tonal compression in film is important. But this is seemingly misrepresented here.
It's the same train. These two channels don't make a film look, they are just something we can learn from film.
I deal with nearly every stock in my Filmist presets which I also mentioned. No film pushes greens and oranges like this. It's not the nature of film. I spend hundreds of hours refining film stocks. Most of my film looks do implement this tip in some way because film has more organic color. But this trick alone will not emulate any given film stock. I spend countless hours getting those dialed in.
dude this is awesome thank you so much !! 🙏
Glad it helped!
Well it's look digital because it is digital. Both photos looks great imo.
Yes but s style is not the same as doing something because you don't know better. The goal of digital was never to look pretend and overdone. It's juts a lack of understating in editing.
Hysterical. I do the same general thing. The sats are just a bit too high by default, esp with turning off LR trying to bump up sat. It will be interesting as photo tools build in AI whether we will see sat turn down for non-essential objects.
Absolutely right! Thank you!
How do I do this on Capture One? Over there there is no color sliders but a color selection. And if I remember correctly that doesn't change the color channel but the color you see. I might be wrong, please help.
C1 has HSL. Both basic and advanced where you can select your own color
The hardest feedback to give is feedback that's not quick or instant to implement. People typically don't want to hear that they need to learn to see colour, and prefer things like set it to 5600k, use a pro mist, use my presets/recipe. You're fighting an uphill battle in those forums, man. God speed. 🙏
People want an easy pill. They should use presets because it will always make you faster and help you understand color better. But people nee to understand it not just fix it in Ai lol
Thank you for your advice ❤
Any time!
Having a BA in commercial photography and communications, I come at RUclips like I approach sitcoms on TV.
Having a Masters in Photography and 15 years teaching experaince I don't really know what you're getting at lol
@@Seimstudios LOL! I think you do.😂
You are basically emulating color-density with the luminance slider on green, which is a good thing... I'm actually editing my photos in a very cumbersome process in resolve, with a lot of tricks I learned from grading, including color density :)
Yes, for orange he seems to be emulating color density. Apparently, on film saturated colors come out darker than they actually should do. But for green he seems to be doing the opposite. i.e. reducing saturation and luminance at the same time. This is weird.
@@simonpayne7994 that’s true although his argument is that digital sensors overproduce the saturation of green channels, which I think is true for Bayer matrix sensors (so almost all modern cameras)
@@jan-k7x1c I would not think so. The two green fields permit better results for green, the primary color of an RGB system that humans see as being brightest. Many coding systems use more bits for green than for red or blue. No software engineer would be silly enough to incorrectly represent one of the primary colors that go into an additive mix to emulate all the others.
Also, do your presets work on Affinity Photo 2?
Presets no. But like like I i8nlude in the Filmist pack will work.
I know that CMOS bayer pattern has RGGB photosites and all that. But could it not be that in reality. It's the film that gets it wrong. But we just prefer the wrongness of film because it enhances skin tones?
Interesting idea but no. People are not orange and greens don't look like they do on most digital edits. Film is much closer to real life even though each film is unique. Digital I think is at the RAW level is more equal on color levels, but the result after pushing them is they they are too much in many cases.
Why are people chasing after the "filmic look" all of a sudden? Where does that fad come from? I agree people oversature too much. We all did that in the beginning.
IMO because digital is open ended and options paralysis is really unsatisfying. Bad digital editing can make a decent photo look awful, so being restricted to something that doesn't violate photochemistry is refreshing
THis video is not about a Filmist look. That said. FIlmic looks are long past being a fad. It's a way to ground your edits and I have yet to see a photographer regardless of experaince level that does not improve their work with some accurate film presets. That's why I invest more into my film pack research wise than anything else. Film stocks spend million or getting good color, digital; is just a RAW with all color the same and always will need a process.
I'm gonnna be honest: I'm like what @jergoes said up top. I was not expecting anything. I thought, Oh well. It'll be entertaining." But when I saw what you did, I went "ohhhhhhh," opened up lightroom, and uh, yeah. That's pretty much it.
Too much green. Got it. ;)
Been using Nikons for years and they always bumped up reds/oranges. In skin yes, bu the worse are clothing/fabrics.
I can't stand the over saturation of all the in camera picture styles so created my own with 2 of the 3 custom spots with one for landscape and the other for portraits and both are as far negative as can go(-3) and for the most part after a lot of experimenting believe it or not ended up dialed in to a very good starting point and yes I'm aware what you see on the rear is a jpeg but thats what i save images as anyway once fully edited
Reminds me of when people use those photo booths in cvs tonprint thier digital pictures. Everyone looks like they're sunburnt to hell and the greens and blues have been squashed.
It upsets my stomach.
Ya those booths should just use a film preset by default and the world would be a better place lol
Awesome tip. ❤ thank you
Very helpful
Thank you!
You bet!
And when you reduce green you add magenta without making magenta excessive. What's the difference between Filmist 1.9 which I have and 2?
Indeed.
We're now at Filmist 2.4. The difference is everything. Ever film has been up[dates and improved in V2
Those four sliders indeed do a lot. However, digital sensors per se are a whole lot more true to real life now than any film ever was, especially negative. Any distortion can be dealt with a profile now that's made in a matter of minutes. Screens have become heaps and bounds more capable than any sort of printing ever was, except resolution. What you describe are all physical constraints (non-linear highlight rolloff and halation, e.g.) and technical limitations of the past - not some intentional quality. Sure, if one prefers the look, by all means, go for it. I just don't see it objectively superior and the whole film simulation trend is probably just another fad that will go by. I prefer to see images and movies that embrace what's possible today, not whatever inferior methods we've been used to in the past.
I used to tink film sims were a fad. Because my customers wanted them I made the most complete and accurate film sim pack. The result if having such understanding of film is why I'm able to make these video. Sensors are capable of being very true to life. But they way files are being edited is not at all, hence the problem and the solution in this video which is just a profile.
I've yet to find a photographer that does not improve his edits by using film inspired baselines. Digital tends to have too much of everything often that shows. Film color has generally better skin tones and more balance. Hence using it's inspiration as a direct preset as in Filmist or just as a reminding guide as in this example is invaluable.
How do you do this in Gimp ?
Hmm. I don't think Gimp has RAW style HSL slider as it's not a raw editor. But you can do mostly the same using Hue and Saturation.
@@Seimstudios Thanks. Just installed DarkTable and using the Colour Equaliser seemed to do the same trick. Thanks for the inspiration. SB.
i've noticed this issue for a long while now, why can't they use red green blue white?
It's just not how the color spectrum works. While is in the Luma values but you have to have all three colors to create color.
@@Seimstudios i ment with camera sensor colors, usually they use rgbg in the 4 pixel square instead of rgbw
I thought all the heavy greens were that way because I read years ago that was how Japanese (Nikon) normally see. I have been fixing foliage for years. Leica seems to be a more true green but still needs.
Never heard that. Film never had these fake greens Each color was unique on each film. IN digital all colors are essentially at 100% by default
@@Seimstudios Because it's not true. Every manufacturer has their own colour science based on whatever look they're going for and the sensor technology they're using, it has nothing to do with how Japanese see vs German. The strong greens come from half the pixels on a Bayer sensor being green, so there's more information in the green channel. Hasselblad's colour science's goal is to reduce saturation and create as neutral as possible a file, Sony wants lots of contrast and saturation, Canon likes overly orange skin tones, Leica changes their mind with every, single, camera. They all have different goals SOOC, but everything can obviously be tuned to taste with raw files.
Is this "cinematic", "cinematographic", manually focused lens/camera, ... - talk not just a distraction? Why should I care if someone took a photo with a film camera? Is that supposed to be an excuse for bad pictures, lack of composition, etc.? And why should I pretend that I used a film camera, when I used a digital camera?
True, but atmosphere and feeling do matter a lot. Check out some of my recent videos on pictorialism. Perfect photos can be made in an instant with Ai. Photos with soul can only be made by us.
Except for your own enlightenment you shouldn't care how someone took an image. If you think that you shouldn't pretend to that you used a film camera instead of a digital or visa versa then don't.
I will say that because of the logistics involved with film photography today I can understand why a digital photographer would want to be able to duplicate a film look.
Because there is truth to the idea that analogue does not violate the physics of light and photochemistry, whereas digital occasionally does. Brains can spot the difference
@@RohannvanRensburg There are processes with film and there processes with digital. They clearly produce different results, however there is no truth. There are just too many variables and we should not forget that there is, was and forever will be and endless stream of awesome and awful photography with both processes.
How many times can you introduce a video in the first few minutes?
LOl, this video is 20 years of expert color advice in like 7 minutes. I'm sorry bro if TikTok has destroyed our attention spans.
At around the 7:00 minute mark, it sounds like you are talking about luminance but adjusting the saturation slider. Can you clarify?
yeah, thats what he did. given that the next step was to darken greens, i think it was just a slip of the tounge.
Yes my mistake. Meant saturation. That's where I recommend starting. Then jump into luma and and hue as needed. I almost always pull luma down on greens for better separation of colors.
Thanks my D800 so green
Very cool.
Dig the crazy " The color out of space" tint to your studio footage. Is this ironic, considering the subject?
Lol not really but maybe a little. A reminder that having a dominant color is not a bad thing. But too much of colors is.
Maybe i would be handy to just shoot digital in the first place, showing analog foto`s in a completely digital environment is kind of silly in my opinion.
Kind of defeats the purpose,
I think this kind of prooves the insanity behind the new anolog craze.
I agree 99 people don’t really give one, fifty years ago on one of my many Hasselblads and color printing my pictures I would be hard pushed to get better portraits than on my iPhone 15, just my limited observation.
I still shoot film often and it's because of the tests I do with it that I realized what I show today. Even so film even scanned teaches me something every time and makes me a better photographer. My shelf is still full of film cameras.
@@Seimstudios I cannot image that you learn less when using a digital camera.
But for nostalgia analog is nice.
@@peterclemmet You`re right, analog was plain bad back in the day.
Shot many rolls and had to rely on development for result, very expensive too.
Almost always dissapointed.
When digital came i bought it right away, what an improvement, i never looked back.
I`m quite amazed by the analog insanity on youtube. Crazy.
So I guess the Capture One default takes care of this... default is 35mm film negative... No extra orange or greens...
No C1 has the same problem. If you have a camera loading a film profile by default like a FUJI for example you may be seeing this more film like look. But I always remove those and use Film Standard profile and put a preset in their place so I have more control.
On Trump portraits you also have to dial down the orange by 30 😂
lol, I think this technique will still apply.
Still can't figure out why people want to have the film look back. It was a horrible material falling short on nearly everything and people want the look back?
This tells me you have not used accurate film tools. I don't know what film you shot, but your statement makes no sense. If most new photographers used film baselines/presets their photos would be 2x better right our of the gate.
@@Seimstudios Ilfords, Kodak, Fuji, what ever served the purpose. Agnostic. I can't count the rolls I've shot and still have some undeveloped in the attic. Alongside with my darkroom equipment. In my experience everything below medium format was simple not sufficient enough to produce large prints. And even then it was a matter of nailing the exposure. Required some experience, especially in product photography. Some material was more forgiving than other. Dia film wasn't my friend. Nowadays we have incredible detailed photos but people don't care about details and ask for the look. They simply forgot that a 35mm ISO 400 negative looks grainy as hell on a A4 sized print. Not to mention fine arts.
Eh, well there's been so many different types of film over the years, seems like you're going for an Agfa look with this but that's not a universal thing for film. Kodak Gold is a good example of a film that over-saturates orange in skin. I do agree that digital cameras way over saturate green though. One thing that people seem to forget is that some films were much better at capturing subtle gradation differences in colours which digital isn't great at but depending on your film stock, it could also push slightly different shades to be similar or completely off. My point being, there's no "film look", there's been hundreds of different films that react to colour and light in very different ways and none are what anyone would consider correct, it's just a matter of taste.
Frankly though, you can edit the colours of that portrait till the cows come home, it's still a poor composition and an awkward pose.
Yes and no. I'm not saying the drop cool makes a film look. I make the what is probably most accurate film pack. I know more about film colors than almost anyone. We're not doing early Agfa looks here as they are much more extreme. You'kk find them in FIlmist. Kodak Gold (which also does this). Nearly all films have this organic green and orange drop in common. Not as an effect, but because it's correct color. What digital is creating is where the problem comes in.
Then again since you're also saying this is poor composition and an awkward pose to pretent I don't know what I'm doing lol, I can only assume you're trolling since this photo clearly is neither. Peace.
@@Seimstudios I'm not trolling, but I do find it interesting that the premise of your video is criticizing how people edit colours, when you're not open to criticism yourself.
I agree that most film types reproduce more realistic greens but I disagree about the drop in orange, some films accentuate/exaggerate warm colours. I'm not sure what you mean about "correct colour" though, as I've never seen a film stock that produces completely accurate colours across an image, so "correct" would be subjective. Printing/scanning can also affect colour and contrast, which is part of the reason it's impossible to make an accurate film look preset, even if you're working with a single digital camera that you've profiled as a base.
5:44 that's why film looks so good: I will argue that. Film look so good because we were looking at film for generations, 100 years. It's hard-coded in our subconscious. It is the look that is with us for generations it is passed by our genes from our ancestors. But why film is like that? Because the white chemistry works. They could not saturate colors more than it could. But some color on film are way more saturated than digital. That is why making film look out from a digital is always worse than having a film. We are truncating things. The same goes when we are shooting film in 2024 but then from the film moment we are truncating that the digital. In the end we are emulating some emotions. And with digital we have 100%: we can't go beyond that. So if you want that particular color stand out, we must subdue all others. In particular red color is very hard to reproduce in digital the same way as in film because of chemistry. When sunlight hits the paper the red color shines completely different way than when we observe the red color on a screen. We will maybe achieve the same effect when we will have artificial light that will be close to what the Sun is. For now the most screens are lit by LED dead are faking white color.
Interesting point but I don't agree. Yes we are use to the aesthetic of film. I used to be the same away about emulating film until I dug in and made a system that did it well. I now realize it was just an excuse. Film based colors make digital editing so much better.
The truth is the film color is more true. People are not orange and greens don't look like people are making them look in digital.
I've never seen someone that really started using accurate film profiles that did not improve their editing process. It gives us a baseline of what is organic and natural.
@@Seimstudios my digital cameras (Pentax) does not make people orange. Skin colors are true. I just watched few film shot movies on Netflix (80') and colors are superb because they are BALANCED and rich not because they are subdued. Cheap digital screams RGB colors (especially monitors!!!!) and if calibrated and or used on high end screens different story. Most emulations (I don't know yours) make crap out of images on good device, since they are made to work on overbright cheap screens. Latest VISION3 film is near 'digital' in its colors and ARRI digital cameras are near film (or better way beyond film in contrast, DR and gamut). We agree that most people just punch vibrance and sat, and THAT makes people orange. It was THE SAME with film if saturation was artificially boosted in post production, even more so since film has much less DR per channel (layer) to work with, so balance is achieved in much narrower exposure windows than digital (see slide film, miss it for 1 fstop and is ruined). Digital is way more.linear and we are not used to see linear since in our eyes there is all sorts of 'compression' going on, as well as masking, to see HDR. But not as those HDR tools that were popular 10 years ago with awful overcooked result.
Yes analog look is very delicate. Digital is here a good 20 years trying to nail it. Film was there 100 years trying the same. But biology had a million years and more to perfect it. It is what we see, not what it is. With digital we must trick our eyes to emulate what our brain think we should see. First of all we must figure out display that will resemble nature then we can talk. But until displays work on additive color mixing and nature on subtractive color mixing, we're comparing apples to potatoes.
10-4 cool trick
viva Mexico 🇲🇽
Not necessary if you shoot Fuji digital cameras …just use one their film simulations tweaked for pleasing skin tones.
Well I'm a Fuji shooter so I can say easily that Your statement is only partly true since the Fuji profiles are not real film simulation. They are decent though but you're much better off shooting RAw and adding a film simulation after. Even if I'm using classic neg I;'ll add it in post with a preset not in camera because the quality will be better.
And there's Fuji, that has 10% more green photosites than Bayer sensor
But still I find this applies the same on any camera. I've used many brands