September 15, 2023

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film presets and styles, Film Presets for Lightroom, Film Styles for Capture One, free lightroom presets, presets, special effects

Filmic Lightroom Presets and Film Styles Reboot your editingand this is why it works.

Grounding is having a starting point. Filmic Lightroom presets and styles help a lot. But your style can still be whatever you want. I’ll show you why in today’s video.

Ever feel like your editing needs a reboot?

To get started you can download my free packs…
Download my Free FIlmist 2 Film presets sampler from the filmist page. Your grounding.
Download the Free Silver 5 free presets pack here which is Filmic black and white.

1. Grounding works because we exist in analog!

Why do most in-camera profiles look bad? Why do I come back to an edit I liked and it seems gross? It’s because digital edits lack a reference point.

You lacked a baseline and went too far. It happens to all of us. Filmic Lightroom presets and styles are not just a hipster fad, and if you’re still not using them you are missing out. So first we’re going to base our edits as close to real analog film as possible. Don’t worry you don’t have to stay there.

Much like Shadow Hacking, which brings you back to in-camera thinking. Filmic Lightroom Presets presets and styles seem simple but are not. I was a skeptic. But today Filmic Lightroom presets are my go-to for every session and for the past 5 years I’ve been developing better film and filmic presets to improve this process.

Level 2 filmic lightroom presets. This film style is the Ektar 100 like and
There is a shadow atmosphere happening here even though the EKtar 100-like. A level 2 film preset in Filmist is not super intense it constantly works and is a grounding development process.

2. Reset your editing brain.

You might be thinking… Nothing new here. But the more you use this process in your edits. Level 2’s especially. The more you realize that these film stocks lasted decades for a reason. They seem simple at first you soon you realize well they are grounded and complicated.

Apply a film you like to every photo. Do your quick exposure adjustments and get the session looking balanced. When you edit with film-like presets and filmic styles you get perspective.

Street photography with level 1 filmic lightroom presets and styles
Street air is a preset from Street’ist. This level one filmic preset has a lot of color and nuance like a chemical film, but does not try to be any specific film.

Look how I came back and re-edited the session with Portra 160-like film preset and a few mods. Each pose is slightly different, but they all have a constant feel. I like them gentle like this but my old self would want to add more mods, saturation, etc. That’s fine, as long as you have grounding to keep you on point.

Soon you’ll find yourself going back to old edits and now they seem strange and overcooked. You reboot your brain in terms of editing. It does not mean other filters and edits are not important anymore. I still use Natural HDR or Bella 2 which are not specifically filmic.

A re-edit of a session a more refined film edit and a good grounding from analog.

In this AI World, real things are gaining value.

And so we relate to and believe in analog things. Especially in this new AI-driven world where sometimes everything feels fake. This level of photography is going to become more important every year and Filmic Lightroom Presets help me stay focused.

Yes, there’s a level 3. Shooting digital side by side with the real film and using that as your grouping for shadow, color, and editing. I do this to practice and further refine Filmist for example but it gives you even more grounding and perspective.

Even the way we adjust exposure changes with analog. Pushing the exposure slider is not the same as pushing film and as I’ve become more advanced in my Film presets, even the mod presets, curves, and exposure settings have improved.

The creamy shadows of this Delta 3200-like. You can mod or turn these presets up to enhance the effect. But I start simple and natural to get a good grounding.

3. Edit grounded. Then move outward.

The grounding keeps you constant even when you’re not doing the filmic style.

So for example I will go to Filmist and use Potra Ektar-like film lightroom presets. Maybe Fuji 400h. I know these analog looks withstood the test of time and that our minds relate to them.

I don’t have to stop there and I may not even stay with a film look. Grounding your edits sounds boring, but it actually makes you flexible and creative and keeps you out of a rut. So even when I go to HDR, that grounding is affecting my edit.

filmic styles and wet plate platinum in photoshop
It does not always stop at a preset. Sometimes I take go further into Photoshop and use chemical-based edits like this cyan plate platinum mix from Emulsion 4 actions. Analog just keeps giving.

So I look at the mood and shadows of my shoot. I may decide to veer from film and use other effects, actions, edits, or presets. But now can really feel where I am in the edit better.

It’s about rebooting the brain to see past the temporary creative blindness that the ever-changing sliders and tools can give us so that we use those tools better with each unique photo session.

At least grab the free Filmic Lightroom presets, film styles, and LUTS I linked above and try them for a while. If they seem not intense enough that’s normal. Your editing brain will soon reboot and you will open up a totally new horizon.

This is a Level 1 Filmic Lightroom preset from Natural HDR. That is it’s using film tone and color inspiration but not trying to be a specific film. I use these liberally but not as my grounding point.

So Let’s Recap…

  1. Ground the baseline of your edits with edits as close to real analog film as possible. Use Filmic Lightroom presets and film styles, or even create your own.
  2. Edit photos with favorite films and use that as your grounded starting point. I will often start with Portra 400 or Ektar as my baseline because these films work on anything and I can apply them to an entire session.
  3. You can expand out with mods, other filters, presets, actions etc., and the final look for your project. Use your first edits as a reference to not edit too far. Staying with the film is also fine. I often stay with the film look/

I hope this helps you refine your edit process as much as it did for me. Let me know in the comments and if needed I’ll do more videos on this. Gavin Seim

portra 400 as a filmic style is amazing and changes how you see tone rolloff on digital
With Filmic Lightroom Presets like Portra 400-like, you almost can’t fail.
Styles like Velvia 100 like let you stay colorful and still know you’re on point and not over-cooked.

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September 9, 2023

1

Gavin Seim, HDR Photography, special effects

HDR Photography’s over-cooked promises lied. Here’s how to use HDR correctly!

And what no one told you about HDR photography?

Working on some refinements for my Natural HDR preset pack, I started thinking about the reality of HDR and that it should be explained better. I will say that everything I show you today will be amplified if you come to my Shadow Hackers class.

If you want easier edits do check out my Natural HDR presets, Lumist, and Filmist tools that I used in the video. But NONE of them are needed to implement these tricks.

The HDR Photo lie that tricked us all?

High dynamic range photography as a term became popular in the early 2000s when the digital camera did not have much dynamic range so we took to stacking and bracketing exposures to get sometimes magical and mostly strange-looking photos.

As sensors grew into monsters of image quality, HDR was being taught wrong. Like that heavily edited Dave Hill, crushed tones look was HDR. But it was not. That continued and I started pushing back with more balanced edits like in my popular Natural HDR presets, my photo courses, and workshops.

Midnight Seattle. My first INTL award-winning bracketed HDR did well because it was edited well.

What’s wrong with that HDR Photography “Look”?

Who am I to say you can’t edit intensely, gritty, or crush your tones? It’s not that we can’t each decide how our photo should look. It’s that HDR is not really what they sold it as and if you know what HDR photography is, we shoot better.

1943 Kodachrome can still be edited as HDR

The problem is that HDR is about tone, not style and that does matter because understanding it wrong leads us to more misunderstand tone.

Today’s video will show you what HDR Photography really is and what it’s not. Not a style, but a way we plan a photo just like a high-key portrait is not a style in itself.

This does not mean the HDR software is bad or that you should not experiment. Only a lot of fake information has been put out about HDR and if you know what really makes a photo HDR you will make everyone better.

Two kinds of HDR Photography – Input, and Output.

After the video, this should make more sense. HDR Photos are about tonal range of light and shadow. You can capture a photo loaded with Dynamic range and edit it for that.

Or you can compress the tones, taking an HDR scene and making more LoFi. Like the portrait below edited with Portrait Crush from Silver 5 presets. Taking a lot of dynamic range in the capture, but toning it down in output.

On the other side, you can take a scene that’s flat and not very HDR feeling and expand its contrast and range in output as we talk about in the video. This is easy to overdue so a good knowledge of shadows helps.

Both are ways to manage HDR Photography and neither is wrong.

A very wide HDR photography scene but still from a single file. LR with Natural HDR and masks.
The capture was HDR. But this edit is not. It’s a LoFi BW process from Silver 5

HDR without Shadows. What are we?

Believe it or not, for years this is how most “HDR” was done in most online courses and demos. This is the result of forgetting what we learned in the darkroom and killing the shadows. That’s why it looks so strange.

It’s probably the biggest mistake in HDR Photography. To be HDR you need High Tonal Range. As I teach in Shadow Hackers, photos need shadow, but especially HDR Photos. Without it, you lack the HDR component.

Leave a comment and tell me what you think.

Gavin Seim

This Mexico scene was fleeting. So knowing my Zones and pushing the limits of the X100 helped.
Even this 2009 file from a Canon G9 has amazing dynamic range and we don’t need to fight the shadow.
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September 2, 2023

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special effects, technique

The best photography lighting is the light you have available and cheap. Even a flashlight!

You don’t want to miss today’s video. For 20 years I’m been beaten with ads and presentations of lighting, modifiers, and the great tools that will finally make me a true Master Photographer. I spent a lot. In the end, becoming a Master was just a lot of competing, studying, and hard work. And I learned other things.

You can just any light and you don’t want to miss this video.

I used Silver Presets and Filmist for the portraits in this. You might also find Lumist actions a great tool to manuapate your light and shadows after.

Shadow and a touch of light.

If you’ve not been to one of my free Shadow Hacker workshops I recommend you come. You won’t regret it and it will transform how you see as it’s like no class you’ve attended.

Using any light has always worked. But with a foundation of shadow, I’ve learned we think differently. The shadow is your base and you layer light over it where needed to create your photo.

This is why random lights make everything easier.

Using any light makes you practice and not focus on the best gadget. But small inexpensive lights like flashlight photography also give you a fluid flexibility to just play with shadow and lay light over it, bounce it off things, and make tone happen.

I teach a lot of technical things about photography and over the years I’ve tried to make the more and more simple. When you understand the flexibility of light and shadow creating a photograph becomes intuitive and you know how to move photons where you need them.

Save your money…

What I’m showing you today is both a technique and a review. Fancy lights and modifiers can be useful. But you only need them when you have a specific task for those tools.

As someone who is somewhat of a gearhead over the years I know being too focused on tools actually distracts us from creating. Sure good tools are great, but sometimes the basic tool you have in the glove box is generally better.

Start playing with any light. Use flashlights in photography like I showed. Grand the little flash that is easy and small. Use the light that just feels good in your hand and to your brain.

Hack shadow and you start to Light everything with anything.

This is not just for portraits or streets. It’s landscapes and buildings and trees. if there’s an ESP equal in photography it’s shadows. But you see shadows with light.

Should you get a strobe and a softbox of beauty dish if you’re a portrait photographer? Probably, but it does not need to be the expensive one, it does not need to be TTL. Once you start to know light based on shadow, you want to be manual and simple.

Go use any light and see what happens… Gav

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August 27, 2023

2

lightroom, special effects

There are no natural photos. Here’s how to master tinting photos in color and B&W

Tinting photos is simply taking a color tone based on chemicals, as I showed in the Recent Emulsion 4.2 update, or based on the film, color temperature, etc. We’ve been doing this since the beginning of photography.

You should tint photos in color not just black and white!

Tinting photos can be all manual or you can use tools like my Emusion 4 actions, Silver 5 presets, and Belladonna.

Don’t limit yourself to photo tinting and editing.

If you’ve been to my Shadow Hackers workshop you have an understanding of how our contrast is created by shadows and tone values, not sliders.

Whether you control it or the camera, you’re getting tinted. You don’t have to over-edit. When a viewer sees your image, they don’t need to think. They’re tinting this, or… that’s a platinum look. The photo just is and should be balanced.

But that does not mean leaving everything plain and flat. Don’t over-edit, but remember your photo tinting, your process, and your chemical look just like from the darkroom. These are subjective and your choice. So play around and make magic happen.

This had a color process from Filmist, but then I added a cyanotype chemical tone in color.

There are no natural photos. Really!

Every photo we take is an interpretation of what we saw. Our eyes don’t even see the same thing.

We can take real photos in the sense that the skies are real, and faces real, not AI-generated. Real moments matter. But color and tone were always a matter of p[erstive, film type, paper type, chemical, and now sensor style, raw converter, etc.

Lake Isabella CA, 4×5 film, wet plate, and cyanotype mix in EMulsion 4.

I chuckle when they say their photos are straight out of the camera.

The camera applied a preset. It’s no more or less real than when we have more control and add that presets in Lightroom. Even LR vs. C1 renders the raw file totally differently and that “straight out of camera look” is not the same in either one.

This purist SOOC idea is not a real thing. Either the camera software applied a color grade, photo tinting, contrast etc, or you did. Even when you shoot film, the emulsion you choose changes how the tint and tone will look.

San Luis Potosi Mexico. A true black-and-white edit developed as platinum from Emulsion 4.

Find what you felt in photo tinting.

A visualization is really finding the look you felt when you took the photo. There are many ways to get there and yes you can over edit and over cook a photo.

This is one reason I love organic feeling tools like Filmist or a platinum look from Emulsion actions. Because they are based on real orgaic darkroom photography they give me a way to go all in on an edit but stay grounded.

But in the end, you decide. I can take this portrait and leave a POrtra 400 look, or I can make a selenium black and white, or I can mix it all up and make a color with a selenium process like this. None are wrong and all look good.

Let me know what you think in the comments and try these photo tinting ideas yourself with the concepts of hunting shadows in mind and watch magic unfold.

Gavin Seim

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August 18, 2023

3

special effects

Deep shadows for Amazing Cyanotype and Platinum prints from digital.

I updated the Signature Emulsion 4 action pack to 4.2. This lets you mix platinum, selenium, cyanotype, and wet plate darkroom looks on digital. So I wanted to share some tips.

Creating perfect Cyanotype / Platinum that respects the darkroom.

In today’s video I’ll show you what’s new, but also how to create better cyanotype, selenium, and chemical looks to get amazing results, even if you are doing this manually without my actions.

My black-and-white editing lineupstarts with Silver presets in LR and C1, then goes BlackRoom actions in Photoshop, then Emulsion 4 for darkroom toning. You can use one or all depending on the photo you are creating.

Emulsion Actions 4.2 update.

In the video, I’ll show what’s new. But you’ll want to delete your old version and update to this so LOGIN HERE and download the latest.

Note: You can see how I use each emulsion of Emulsion 4 in this Playlist on YouTube.

If you own a V3 or older version and want to upgrade, send me an email, effects@ seimstudios.com and I’ll hook you up with your discount code.

PS: Make sure you share your results in the Shadow Hunters group so we can learn from you.

in 4.2 I’ve done more refinement to the base recipes and added more tools for mixing shadow.

Mapping shadows and gradients for better cyanotype, platinum, and more.

Since V4 Emulsion uses a gradient map approach Like my BlackRoom actions.

So let’s say I want a Cyanotype or Selenium tone. All the layers below effects the contrast shadow mix etc and you can use the base recipe or use the actions I show to mod them.

You can take the same approach if you are doing everything manually as well, it just takes longer to build all the steps and controls. But you coudl make your own actions this way also.

So at the top of the layer stack, a gradient map layer is created that maps color tints I’ve sampled from darkroom prints like platinum, wet plate, and cyanotype.

Variants of each hue are placed using that map in specific shadow and tone points creating dimension. That’s the power of converting with a gradient map and I use it for all kinds of black-and-white conversions now.

Just like the darkroom, you want choices. A platinum look here VS a Cysnotype look creates a totally different feel but both are powerful aesthetics.

Why not just stay in RAW?

If you see my Silver presets you know I create some cool tones in those that use the Split tone. color grade tools. These can create really nice looks for quick edits, but I find they lack the depth I want in a fine art print.

The problem with just Split toning or color grading as we see in Lightroom or Capture One is it’s just sort of a shadow muid and highlight tone. With the mapping approach, we can many more points of tone.

You can see in the video how this vertical layer approach in Photoshop lets anything be adjusted and the tones are remapped based on shadow and light in real time creating intimate control.

Contrast this to an effect in a plugin where you just get a look and then it pastes onto a flat layer. This is why native tools like presets and actions are always more powerful than plugins.

I hope you enjoy this update and learned something today – Gavin Seim

When I want a more natural no-tinted look I still love selenium. It makes a black and white feel more darkroom-like without looking like a color effect. This is variable of course in the selenium action so mix it how you like it.
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