Transcripts
1. Intro & What You'll Need: Hello friends. In this photo editing tutorial, I'm going to show you how
to get that beautiful, vintage grainy,
cinematic aesthetic on your travel photos using
Adobe Lightroom Classic. By the end of this tutorial, you'll know exactly how to
transform an image like this into one that
looks like this. There's something
so beautiful and nostalgic about having a
vintage edit on your photo, kind of like a
Polaroid film shot. And there's something so
evocative and dreamy and warm about this that just really transports you
to another world. All you'll need for
this tutorial is a laptop or device with
Lightroom installed on it. Of course, a mouse or a
keyboard if you prefer using external tools and
then a raw photo to edit. In this tutorial, I'm going
to show you how I personally like to transform my digital
photos to get this soft, muted instant film or
disposable camera look. Now, let's jump
in and we'll open up Lightroom and
import our raw image.
2. Importing to Lightroom & Creative Style: First things first,
I'll import that image. I'm going to edit. I'm going to click
up here on develop. So what we have here is this beautiful misty
Sunrise that was shot at about 630 in the
morning in Pollyanna mater, which is this
gorgeous coastal town in Italy in the region of polio. I'm going to tap the I button on my keyboard to show
you the image data. This is a CR2 file, so this is a Canon raw image. This was shot on a wide-angle
lens and it's full frame. And as you can tell, the
quality was just stunning. This is a beautiful image
straight out of the camera. And if I zoom in, you can see the details
of my dress on the rocks, on the buildings surrounding us, on the water surface, on these kind of misty
ruins and the back. Let's even detail on
the balcony railings. And of course, this beautiful, beautiful diffused golden light. This kind of golden light is
what photographers live for. So I'll hit the I
button again to get rid of the image info overlay, what I'm going to suggest
to you is that you shoot exclusively in raw or
cause and orange jpeg. Especially if you
plan on editing your images on Lightroom. Because raw photos
are going to give you so much more flexibility
in recovering detail, helping you create such
a more powerful image in post-production or
when you're editing, I go through this and
a lot more detail in my Lightroom editing course. So check out the link in the description if
you're interested in exploring the foundations of photo editing and
Lightroom with this edit, we're going to go for
vintage or go for nostalgia. We're gonna go for Kodak moment. I can think of nothing more beautiful than applying the sun soaked vintage cinematic
aesthetic to an image like this. Anyway, on with the
edit, let's go.
3. Basic Adjustments: Tone & Presence: So the first thing I'm
going to do is head over here to the
developed toolbar. We have our masking
tools up here, but we're not going
to touch those today. The first thing we're going
to do is go here to profile. And I'm going to change it
from Adobe Color, adobe Vivid. And see the difference
is so subtle, but immediately the vivid
makes it more punchy. And if I hit the slash bar on my keyboard to show you
the before and after. Four is a bit more muted. After, it's a bit more vivid. Now, the vivid is going
to be toned down. So don't worry if you
think this looks overly saturated or overly contrast it. If that's a word. But it's really
important to bring out those colors now so that we can reduce the contrast and reduce
the saturation afterwards. So I'm just going to jump
right in and get going. So sometimes the white balance
will already be fixed, showing you what
it's like as shot. I'm actually not going to
touch these two sliders because we'll be working with the HSL panel down
here later on. So lets move through
the tones lighter. So the first thing I'm
gonna do is actually reduce the exposure is
quite a bright image. And we're going to be
using the tone curve and these other sliders to
bring up the brightness. So we'll go to exposure, maybe about 25 works. I'm going to leave the contrast because remember we've already punched it up by changing
the profile to Adobe Vivid. Then, because there's a
lot of whitespace here, I'm going to bring the
highlights down by quite a lot. About the 40. Now if I tap the
before and after, you can see that already just tweaking the exposure
and the highlights have helped reduce the brightness
of the image so that all of that gorgeous sunlight diffused
brightness is coming, certainly from the
left-hand side. And that matches up with my eyeline as the
subject moving on. Now we're going to
up the shadows. And the shadows is
really important because when you use a
profile like Adobe Vivid, the contrast is high,
the shadows are high, so we want to pull those out and make it a
little bit more bright. I'm going to push the shadows
up here to about plus 30. Continuing on, I'm
going to leave the whites where they are, but I am going to push the
blacks up to about plus 19. So if I do before and after, you can see that the harshness of the contrast in the
Adobe Vivid profile has been softened
now by changing the blacks and the shadows
and lifting those up higher. So it's a bit more of a mellow feel and much less contrast, which is important because
in a vintage grainy look, there's less contrast and it's much more blurry
as much more soft, as much more cinematic. So moving down, we're going to get on to the present
section here. This image is packed
with texture. If I zoom in, you can see the
rock face is just gorgeous. You've got the texture
of the worser, you have the texture
of these sort of ruined type, old buildings. It's giving me medieval, it's giving me vintage. I've got a pattern on the dress. The last thing I want to do
is increase the Texture, slider sharpness of the rocks is something I want to turn
down because again, if anything looks overly sharp, it's not going to
look cinematic. It's not going to look, analog is gonna look very digital. And what we want to go for
is that zany analog field. Let's pull down the
clarity by about ten. I'm also going to leave the Dehaze slider
because I think the, the natural light diffusion
and this image is so clean and beautiful right
out of the camera already. I'm not going to touch
that slider here. But for reference, what
it could look like is you could make it
more softer blown out. We can make it even more
contrasted and punchy. But of course, I'm going to double-click here is recessive. This is perfect the way it is. I'm going to leave the
vibrance alone now, but I will pull down the
saturation to about 15. And although the color is gone, we're going to bring
that color right back further down below when we
get onto the HSL sliders.
4. Tone Curve: Achieve Cinematic Depth: Before we move into
the HSL sliders, I want to jump into
the tone curve. Now, the tone curve is the most wonderful
tool for really honing in on your
own personal style. So the tone curve is the
number one thing that is going to give you
so much control, polish and help you get
that more cinematic look, as I described in my
Lightroom course, there is one very popular
curve called the S-curve, which a lot of
content creators use. So I'm gonna go ahead and use a variation of the
S-curve right now. So what I'm gonna do is create three dots on this
line just by clicking. They don't have to be exact. Then from here, we
can tweak our tones. By the way, the other part of the image affects
the highlights. So I'll show you like this. You can see just the
light is affected there. If I pull down the bottom part, it's just the shadows
that are affected. So ever so slightly
flatten the highlights. And then what I'm
gonna do is really push some body and feeling
into these shadows. This is where the vintage
effect comes to life. So can you see the
difference is very subtle. I'll zoom in. You can kind of
see a bit better. But the more I lift that tail, the more muted the shadows get. And I think that's
absolutely beautiful. And a lot of content creators and photographers love to mute the shadows and the darker tones for that more cinematic look. So I'm not gonna go too far, but I am going to take
it to about here. And maybe I'll erase
this a little bit so it's not so harsh. K. So again, if I hit
the before and after, you can see it was much more sharp, crisp, saturated before. And now afterwards. It's much more muted. And immediately for me, at least I'm feeling or mood, I'm getting this more
reflective cinematic feel like this is almost
the start of a movie. It's the beginning, maybe an ending because of the sunrise. And now I feel like these tones just bring out so
much more emotion. Because before with
the digital work, It's more travel magazine style. And now with this, It's
more cinematic, zany. So again, nostalgia is
what we're going for. So I definitely
recommend lifting the tail of your
tone curve to give you those muted shadows.
5. Colour Grading: Hue, Saturation, Luminance: Now we're going to get
onto the coloring. So I absolutely loved
playing with the HSL color sliders because after using the tone curve
where the image, it really comes back to life. Because you can play around with what you want
to highlight just by using different colors
or what you want to change and how you want to evoke a place you've shot by bringing
it back to the colors. If that makes sense, Let's
just jump straight in. I'm gonna go ahead
and tinker around. Maybe let's do about 35 with the reds because I don't want
any harsh reds in there. And I will desaturate
the reds a little bit. Maybe it's about 22 and I'm going to reduce
luminance to about 25. Moving into the oranges. I think the oranges are
going to be interesting because you can see if
I move these sliders, that the entire image is
actually comprised of oranges. So I'm not going
to touch the hue, but I am going to reduce the saturation
just a little bit, maybe to about minus 11. I'm going to push the luminance
down to minus 11 as well. I hope into the yellows, I will push them
towards the orange because I would like them to
be more orange than green. If you see that everything is very green and I'm trying to keep that nostalgic
sons Outlook. So we're going to bring those
yellows over to orange, maybe about minus 18. Then I'm going to
bring the saturation down quite a bit to minus 35. But because I will
not warm glow, I'm going to push that
luminance up to about 22. Next up jumping into the greens, I won't really touch
the greens because there's not much green
happening in here. But I will just reduce
that a little bit. Which is the luminance
of it as well. As we get into the
blues, the sky, parts of the sea and my dress
are going to be affected. I'm going to reduce the
saturation by Bell. 27. They marched, remember about 18? Now getting on to the blues. Again, my dress and the sky in the top right-hand
corners will be affected. You can see they're
coming away from purple. I'm going to push over
towards the app was about 24. I'm going to reduce saturation
to about 20 as well. I'm going to bring the
luminance down to about 22. Again, if you feel
like this is too far, don't worry because
we're going to do final touches at the end. Finally, I don't want
any kink in that dress. So I'm going to push this
all the way to the blues. So there's no purple, just blue. I'm going to take
saturation down as well, quite far, about 70. And I'm going to bring
the luminance down a snitch about on a 16. And just in the magenta, I'll do the same
thing as I don't want any pink in the image. I'll just reduce the saturation. So now that we've tinkered
around with the color slider, I'm going to hit the
before and after. So you can see this is what
it looked like before. And now it looks
much more filmic and these saturated moving down, I'm going to go into
my favorite part of this whole shebang, which is the color grading. Now again, the color grading
is a space where you as a content creator can really put your own spin on an image. You can choose to draw out dark blues and oranges
for that Hollywood look, it's really down to you and the contexts and the mood
you're trying to evoke. My special sauce with
photography is of course, those warm golden tones. My presets are all very
warm, sun soaked, diffused. So I am going to jump straight
in here with the shadows. And I think I'm going to
pull them not too far. Up towards orange here. Now, you can immediately see
if I click this eyeball, you can hide the shadows. If I click it back.
It's very subtle, but there is definitely
a difference. And you can play with the
shadow slider here as well. I'm not gonna do that. I'm
just going to leave it as is. And then what I'm gonna do is
head over to the mid tones. And this is where
you can really play around with the mood
you want to create. That I'm just going to
go ever so slightly up towards the yellows,
yellow gold. And then I'm just going to
leave the highlights alone.
6. Make it Vintage: Grain & Final Details: Now scrolling down to
the Details panel, there is going to be potentially some edits already applied. So I'm just going to leave
the sharpening where it is. And then if I scroll
all the way down now to the effects panel, this, this bad boy is where we can get that
beautiful vintage grain. So you don't wanna go too
far sometimes on the grain, which I am guilty of. Just depends what look,
you're going for, but I'm going to go in with the grain now because I love it. And if I zoom into my
silhouette as a subject, it's still very sharp. It's still serving
me a bit of digital, whereas I want it to look
like a printed image. So what I'm going to do is
take the green slider and push the amount to about 25. So if I hit the
before and after. You can see if you're looking
at the sharpness here on the shin that has just made it feel immediately
so much more vintage. You can also play around with
the size here of the grain. I don't want it to be
too rough like this. So I'm going to pull
it down to about 16. And then playing around
with the roughness. If you reduce the roughness, I find it again still
that's quite digital. So I'm actually going to
push the roughness up to about about 82. I know that's quite
a lot, but I really, really like that speckled
dusty, scratched up look. One quick before and after here. And you can see how
the grain has made it feel so much more vintage. Going up to the
lens corrections, this is just a
personal preference. You can choose to
enable lens correction, which gets rid of the vignetting in all four corners
of the image, or you can choose to leave it. I'll preview what
that looks like here. And what it does is it pulls out the corners Ramirez distortion
and correct your image. But I personally
like to leave that off when I am editing a vintage look because I just
feel like it's much more, it's much more natural. And film cameras naturally
create a bit of vignetting, so it feels more
raw and authentic. You could technically
leave this here. What I'm going to do is up
the vibrance just a bit. And I'm going to bring
back the oranges, just a smidge there we have it.
7. Transformation: Before and After!: Now, if I hit the before
and after, before. After. That, in a nutshell, is your vintage Kodak
moment film edit. We've all been wanting
to export the image. Just go to File Export. I'm going to call it
vintage film camera, edit, export. Open that full size. And that is how we do it. And if you loved
this edit and you don't fancy going through
all the steps yourself. Then as a very
special gift to you, I'm giving away the
exact Lightroom preset that I created just now. So check out the link below. Sign-up, use it, add, please tag me in the photos
you apply this preset to, so I can share them with my
community on social media. You can find me at elimination
all over the place. As I said, if you
found this useful, please share with anyone
who might find it relevant. Check out the rest
of my videos and I will catch you in
the next tutorial.
Mel Legarda, Travel Blogger and Content Creator
