Milky Blacks & Faded Film Look in Lightroom

[divider line_type="No Line" custom_height="30"][dropcap]D[/dropcap]espite continued striving for perfection in the world of digital photography, photographers continue to 'destroy' that perfection with looks and feels that are far from perfect. Cameras capable of extremely low noise, cameras capable of millions of ISO and able to shoot in virtual darkness and cameras with 15 stops of dynamic range and it's not uncommon these days to find images where the old is imitated through new methods and almost make you wonder why we ever want perfection in the first place.[divider line_type="No Line" custom_height="30"]A look that is very popular at the moment is where an image has a faded film look with the all popular milky blacks. If you ask me, I think it's a look that many people have come to love after the increase in the idea of the flat picture profile and, more recently, cameras offering s-log profiles which are specifically designed to be as washed out as possible in camera so as to offer as much post-processing ability in programs like Final Cut Pro and Premiere.Rod (you'll see him in future videos here at tdcat.com) processes a lot of images in this way and I really like it. He has a unique style of his own that is not exactly what I would call the same as an SLOG profile, but there are definitely similarities.

What's In The Video?

I thought I'd do a quick tutorial on creating a faded film look together with the milky blacks in Adobe Lightroom. I'm using the latest version of Lightroom as per the 1st February 2016 but this doesn't use anything that couldn't be done in any version of Lightroom or, in fact, many other image editing program.I'm intentionally using a really uninspiring image here so you can see how we can brings the image to life a bit. It's a nice look that is still a refreshing change from the over saturated iPhone look despite it's heavy use these days.

Comments & Feedback

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