I’m on a mission to change that and I want my first video of the year to do that. Most photographers don’t realize that photographic tone is the secret skill that makes them understand every shot. Today we learn it…
This video on photographic tone would have saved me years.
But videos like this did not exist when I was starting out. These are the 3 keys of tone in photography so you can master them fast regardless of your experience level. And they will change how you create photos.
The unabashed flaring of the sun gives a natural haze to this morning street that can’t be done with a single slider. It was processed gold using GoldChrome
The stuff that great photos are made of.
The photographic tone is the foundation of great photos. But the tone is a wide-ranging one that comes from the painters and the way they learned to understand shadow and contrast long before cameras.
This is the lost skill in Photography that I go on deeper in my workshops and today I’m sharing the keys to unlock this door in the simplest way I know how. IN consists of 3 elements that lead us to what tone does for us and why it is important.
Here’s how I explain photographic tone. But it’s more important to show!
Shadows create contrast
Contrast reveals tone
Tone creates atmosphere
These 1,2,3 lists mean little to your photographic tone without context. So in the video, we’re comparing different photos to see how not only edits but how shadow contrast and ambiance in each will define our result.
IN another Xpan style crop we see light creating bloom and reducing contrast. The net result is that tone is more subtle and more contrast is created in the overall image. Edited with Street’ist.
Most photographers don’t even know what it is
In my Exposed Master class, we learn everything about exposure and zones. Those are the technical aspects. But if you’ve been to Shadow Hackers or seen the Photo Perfect workshop you know that combining those with the artist’s aesthetic is what makes a great photo.
In the end, the tone is pretty simple and yet subjective. But if you constantly remind yourself of the three factors. Shadow, contrast, and tone, which is the combination of all the light and dark and mist and color. All of them combined create a tone in your own style.
We see the contrast between the burned tree and the tone of the model. Then edited with a David Hamilton-inspired process to create softness with contrast and a balanced photographic tone.
Less contrast is often more contrasty!
As much as I use sliders and settings and layers inside and out in my tool packs. Tone-like shadow is not created by the slider it’s just moved around.
When we use contrast to just create hard lines we lose tonal nuance and atmosphere. In the end, the contrast of the overall scenes is less, and viewers don’t see the nuance you wanted to show.
As I keep building these free resources and simplifying the process of understanding tone I help myself learn more and hopefully, you as I realize a dream that’s spanned 20 years to make a simple process for those of us who want to truly master our style in photography.
We compare two of these in the video. Note how the tone of this one is softened but less distracting than what might be called the contrast image. Edited with Filmist.
There are lots of free Lightroom presets around my site like Silver and Natural HDR. But my most popular ones are my free film presets and I’ve updated them today for Filmist V2.
In the FIlmist free film presets and styles pack you get the next-gen Portra 160, Fuji Classic Negative, and Agfa RSX 100 film styles.
Just using these film presets will give you edits that feel true to the film. Photographers are learning that real photos are what matters in this new Ai world. For more on this check out my post and grounding your edits with film styles.
Below is a hands-on video from my channel on how to use Filmist 2. If you need help installing the free LIghtroom presets or Capture One Styles, check out the videos on the help page.
Here are the improved film styles in the free film pack.
The latest refinements of these film styles are like true film. I’ve shot more film, done more side-by-side testing, and made every film recipe in Filmist 2 better.
I hope you love these and buy the entire Filmist film presets pack. It’s years of work and it is the best lightroom and capture one film presets I know of. But for now, at least grab my free film presets pack and enjoy.
Oh, and you also get free film LUTS in the free and complete pack so you can get the true film look in video editors like Premiere Pro, Resolve, and other photo apps like OnOne and Luminar.
Portra 160 Gen.3 Film Preset
Portra 160 free film preset is a classic and the latest Gen3 version is even more refined. Portra 400 and 800 are also included in Filmist Complete.
How do I decide what presets to use? The power of REAL Photos.
I’ve been making high-grade Lightroom presets and free Capture One styles for many years. So why am I obsessed with getting perfect film looks? It comes back to maintaining that natural real look that the film created and that I’ve managed to duplicate in Filmist 2.
I use the balance I learn in creating film presets to improve my other presets. That’s why they all play together well.
Some photos need a different look. I normally use films as a starting point. But depending on my photo I’ll also use Natural HDR, Streetist, and my other packs.
Each of these packs also has mods. So while I love the ChemKit2 mods in Filmist I don’t hesitate to go to ModKit from Silver 5 black and white presets or maybe GoldChrome for a rich color warm look.
Fuji Classic Negative updated in Filmist 2 Free Presets Pack
The Classic negative look is inspired by Superia 200. One of my most requested presets and the new Filmist 2 version is even better and more accurate than what you get on a Fuji camera.
The film looks for digital is more powerful and moddable.
The thing with film presets is that you won’t edit this way manually. Digital sliders are designed to let us push hard and the nuance of good film styles can take weeks to refine.
In a real darkroom, we could manipulate how we develop and print. So I put a ton of time into the ChemKit2 mods in Filmist. They let you use a film look and then adjust it instantly with darkroom-inspired processes. I included of of these for tone in the free pack. Turn it up and down and see what happens.
The beauty of using Lightroom presets and Capture One style packs is that with well-made film styles, you get edits that take hours in seconds. Once you get used to the milder grounding look of film it becomes a go-to. But if you have a photo that is not working with film, don’t hesitate to branch out.
Agfa RSX 100 II Free Capture One Style and LR Preset
Agfa series films are rare as digital film styles very much but they will soon be one of your favorites. I included Afga RSX 100 with stunning color and fine grain in the free film presets pack.
I hope you enjoy the Filmist 2 free film Lightroom presets and styles pack and that these filmic styles let you see digital in a new light and use the rest of your presets, actions, and tools better.
People have been talking a lot about Photoshop Generative Ai. But as I’ve shown in other videos, it lacks a lot. In today’s video, we see how good it is and ask, is Ai art the future?
I tested Photoshop Generative Ai vs free Open Source Tools!
I have been learning what AI can do outside the world of Adobe. Hint, it’s a lot and as photographers, we need to know what we are dealing with and how it will affect us.
The AI world is not waiting around. In fact you can download free open-source AI-generating apps like Fooocus right now, install whatever models you want, and create from scratch or edits.
There’s two kinds of photo AI. Assist Ai tools like we see in LR or Elegance Speed Masks.
Edits like I get from Silver or Power Workflow are natural and great. I can then refine those with Blackroom and other Photoshop tools. But how far should we take these AI edits?
Will this ruin photography? Should we use these tools, or reject them? What about the ethics of all this?
In this real photo, Ai tools left our model alone in this real photo but changed the swimsuit into something entirely new.
The fake has gone too far.
Ai is not real and still lacks authenticity. This brings us to the controversy in Photography. AI changes everything. But I talk often on the podcast about the brave new world where everything feels fake. Does Photoshop Generative Ai and other Ai tools make that worse?
Ai is a tool and of course, stock photography and illustrative commercial work will start filling with AI images, But people are going to value real things and real photos in the coming years.
We can’t just ignore AI and that’s why companies like Adobe are going in heavy. We can live in denial like many photographers did when digital arrived and created their fate. We must stay on top of the tech and THEN decide whether to use it or not.
Fully AI-generated photos like this will be used a great deal in stock photos. But I think they will add more value to real photos.
Truth is important but Ai is not really truth!
With Ai images even being faked as journalism from war-torn countries, we’re already seeing a pushback. People are getting tired of fakes. new verification systems are being created.
AI images are not inherently wrong. Fakery and deception are. It’s important as photographers we maintain the standard of real photos and don’t lie about how our images were made.
Most can see the fakery. Ai images tend to be too perfect and not sold. That will improve, but I think the best use case for it is using AI tools to create better real-world results.
There are also legal concerns. But it’s complicated.
Are your Ai models made with licensed images? Is it fair use? These are big debates happening right now that many photographers and artists are upset about. Because Ai is simply re-creating concepts, poses, etc that real-world artists have already created.
Derivative works are a legit thing. You can study art or read books and be inspired by them and create your own. But how far is too far?
Photoshop Generative Ai is interetsing. But it’s far from the best tool for Ai jobs and where Ai will take us is still open to debate.
Making a preset and calling it a film is easy. But making a digital film look like film is really hard. It’s not something you do manually and most film presets don’t get very close. In today’s video, we solve that.
This update brings a lot of small refines and bug fixes to mods and film looks. You’ll find updated presets marked 2.1. With any color, tone and mod improvements across the film styles including subtle tweaks to make films like Portra and Ektar even more accurate to film. Also, the new Digital orange fixer shown in this training video is in 2.1 and very useful.
I love film. But it’s expensive so I need film recipes that work.
So when I went to work on Filmist 2 it was after 5 years of refining Filmist V1 and sending our many free updates. I wanted more though and that’s where the idea of True-Film was born.
I also wanted a cleaner pack of presets and better darkroom-inspired mods like push and pull tools that emulated the way contrast changes when you push and pull your ISO in the camera.
It meant shooting film and digital side by side with the same light and settings. In fact, in film tests, I use the same aperture, shutter speed, and often the same vintage lenses to get the exact result.
Still, that’s not enough. Many films are long gone and even films I can use vary by batch, how people scan etc. So I have to test not only my scans but also look at how other people are using that film and what its result should look like.
In case you missed the launch video it gives a lot of quick examples.
For example the new Gen2 Porta 400 Film preset.
This is tough because this film is all about skin tones. You would think with the endless digital tools in Lightroom Capture etc that nailing out is easy. But getting a perfect film skin tone is super hard. I spend hours adjusting curves by one point and then another.
Sometimes I doubt myself and then I compare it to other products and presets to create a film that looks digital and realizes it’s working. It’s not that these are not good products, it’s that getting the film right is that hard, and in FIlmist it’s the entire focus.
Does that film feel boring or flat?
I’ve made videos about basing edits with film presets and how it stops you from pushing sliders too far. We’re used to extremes. From giant movie exposition to over-saturated photos. And it’s OK to push up your saturation. But start natural!
When people first try film presets sometimes they think it’s not enough of a change. It’s too flat or plain. This is because we’ve been conditioned by digital to over edit and it makes photos that seem fake and unnatural.
I think that’s why many film tools don’t look like the films. They are over-edited to try and please a before-after sample and make it look intense. But it’s not true to the film.
Vision 250 Cinema film preset is warm and versatile.
2024 is a year where natural things win.
People are jaded by fakery. In an AI world, professional photographers need to take away the disbelief people have started feeling. real photos are becoming more valuable than ever.
I designed these presets to be adjusted. So you can push op the intensity or add a mod like the Push contrast mod that mimics how film contracts increase when you push in the darkroom.
The result of these true-film ideas is film looks that are true to the film as much as we are possible but that also can be manualized to your needs and still have natural real-world feelings contrast and details.
The new Ektar 1000 presets for Lightroom and Capture one is a great recipe alongside Natura 1600
The future of making these presets more True-Film.
With a mission of vitality and accuracy, I have a lot of free updates planned for my FIlmist users. My shelf is full of film right now that I’m doing more tests on. I watch countless videos old and new to try and refine films that are gone from shelves. These need to be preserved.
I’m working now on doing darkroom prints to further refine recipes because even scans are not always the same. Every scanner and software converts things differently. So I’ll be doing darkroom prints to reference and refine the recipes.
The Filmist 2 Velvia 100 preset on this street photoFuji Pro 400h is no longer available but it’s a classic much like Portra and is a powerful preset
Do you NOT post because you’re unsure? What, where, and is this OK?
We have a major social media problem in Photography.
Remember the days when Instagram was for photos and you saw what people you followed shared instead of being spammed with video reels meant to generate clicks?
Facebook was the same. You posted and your friends and fans saw. Instantly. Not anymore! People don’t really follow you. They join a platform to be cleverly spammed by algorithms.
Social media has become a scam perpetrated by the biggest media companies on the planet. They create no content and you are the merchandise!
Share your photos. Get get on both groups gearted to real photo talk…
As photographers we capture history and we tell stories that will never be told again- Mexico City 2023
We need to stop being only in ONE place.
Does this fit my audience, Does it break any rules? Does it fit my grid? Am I allowed to express this? Will it get ignored for videos of girls shaking booty? Yes, it will!
If you were in business around 2008 you probably invested a lot on your Facebook page. Because it worked People followed and saw your effort. Then Facebook took that away and made pages nothing more than a place to run ads.
These sites are about profit now so they will show whatever the algorithm thinks it can squeeze the most from. This sucks as artists. But photographers are also journalists.
We have important stories and messages. Censoring artists and journalists will change the world in a very bad way!
I don’t use that word in a good way. If you post something it has to outrage or amaze. Mocking comments and toxic posts are rewarded while thoughtful ones are ignored. You’ve no doubt seen this in many photo groups that are essentially driven by trolls.
“Platforms know that anger and sesnatislism keep us glued to the set. They mad it work this way to keep us enagdged, angry, commenting, and coming back.“
I still have Instagram. But the truth is unless you play the algorithm game, it’s dead. That game mostly means short videos or sensationalized photos that go viral and have no relation to why we signed up. To share our ideas.
We need alternatives to Instagram and Facebook for photographers. We need places without constant censoring. We need a place to share with each other as photographers and learn and have real conversations.
Yellowstone National Park. 10 Second exposure.
They censor you but not to protect you!
The algorithm demands you do things to get attention. But if you do it wrong or policies change you are punished. Often in ways that make no sense and with no recourse. Your invenstment lost.
This is happening every day to creators on YouTube, Facebook, and beyond who did nothing wrong. And the censorship is not to protect. It’s to protect the bottom line. The money.
If filtering was there to protect you, censoring would be settings on YOUR account that told the platform what YOU want to see. Everything, disturbing new, naked people, etc.
I often take photos I love but don’t share them because of how sites might punish me. I edited this with a platinum look in Emulsion 4 and used Naked Darkroom to finish the texture.
For now 2 places I made to share your photos and Shadow talk.
Facebook pages are pretty much uselessyou pay now but groups can still be a great place to share and talk among other photographers.
Groups come with all the downsides of Facebook but the upside is everyone is there so it’s still a good place to share among each other even if it’s not a great place to share work publicly.
Flickr used to be the place to share photos. Then came Instagram which now sucks. So Flickr has made a comeback as a place not to be influencers but just to share our work, explore new photos, and talk about the craft.
We had a very active group back in the early Pro Photo Podcast days before the other platforms took over and I’ve brought it back so go join.
Flickr is also a bit less restrictive than Facebook so you can safely post boudoir work and such in this group, just keep it classy and maintain a good mix. Plus it works amazing on a desktop browser. Most try and force us to use mobile because they better control us there.
Fixing the bigger problem means people, not platforms.
We should never trust our life’s work to a corporate platform. We need to de-centralize. This is not my idea and is a growing sentiment. Here’s a recent Engadget video on the topic.
There are start-ups like Vero. I’m on there. But it’s inactive, discovery is terrible and you can’t use it from the desktop which is the same as saying they don’t take professionals seriously.
The internet was supposed to make us more free. But now we live in a world of near-constant censorship where platforms control our voices and even the news.
This is true of Facebook, YouTube, and nearly every major platform. We always have to worry about expressing ourselves for fear of being banned, not because we did something wrong but because we trigger a corporate algorithm that could affect profits.
I think that social media needs to be more decentralized. That is you post in the app you like, but people follow you on a decentralized app where they are still following you even if you are no longer on that app or platform. It takes the power away from corporate interests and puts it back with us.
RSS for example does this which is why podcasts like Pro Photography Podcast don’t have to bow to algorithms. But we need tools that go beyond that. It’s being talked about but I have yet to see a large-scale solution to this problem and I hope we will all keep fighting for it.
Our voices are at stake.
The streets of Mexico City were edited with the Ultra 400 preset from Filmist. But on some platforms, this could be censored even though it’s a part of the city.
For now, the solution is to diversify.
You’ve seen me doing this in the past year.
I use my email list. I blog. I re-started the Pro Photography Podcast because I saw the way YouTube has zero respect for creators and realized I should to NOT make it my entire focus.
Growing a website is important. But creating content on that site beyond just a photo album, building lists that have people who care, and looking for a way to de-centralize matters.
For now I hope you’ll join me on not just Facebook but Flickr so we can NOT keep everything in one place and keep conversion going and these platforms like Facebook screw us over again and again as rules and politics change.
