How To Create A Dreamy Film Look: Lightroom Editing Tutorial

in this video I'm jumping into Lightroom to show you how to create these dreamy film edits in your [Music] photos look I really love and use frequently in my own edits one that I've had a lot of people ask me recently to make a video on so here we are I have broken this process down into a few really easy to follow steps so you can easily achieve this look in your own unique way just to note here this video isn't designed to show you how to replicate an exact film stock like portra 400 or anything like that it's simply taking a lot of qualities that I really like about film and then adding my own spin to it especially in terms of color another note on this style which a lot of people asked about in my Italy recap video thanks for the Love on that one whether it's created by using a m filter or more in the edit and simply the answer is a bit of both just to show you how much is in the edit itself here are a few I took on the Fuji X Pro 3 without using a m filter on the left and on the right all taken with the R5 using a quarter strength black m filter and applying the exact same preset to both so you can see a Mis filter will definitely enhance this look but not essential so really up to you whether you want to use one or not all the photos in that video I pretty much use the exact same preset this Haru one here for my C film pack if you do want to check them out I have popped the link down in the description for you there's also some really useful bonus effects in that one which I use all the time like Mas and borders so check that out if you're interested but of course I won't be using presets in this video but we will try to replicate a very similar look to that one let's jump in all right step one overall tone adjustments I have broken this video up into easy steps so I've set those as chapters as well starting here with our basic adjustments and also the tone curve so a really important starting point so here's our starting point I have copied across the tone curve already so I'll just turn that on now if you need more information on the tone curve I've got plenty of other videos explaining it but we'll go through it really quick in this one so a very slight S curve bringing those blacks up a little bit just fading them out slightly and our shadows it brought down just a fraction there you can see somewhere between our midtones and our highlights I've just brought that up a fraction as well moving across to our colored curves so this is where I've created a lot of extra contrast you can see there just by adding a slight S curve to each of these and then there is some slight adjustments there just to add that slight Color cast as well if you want to stop and look at these in more detail please feel free so moving on to our basic adjustments and because I've added so much contrast here I actually want to take a little bit of it out so I'm going to go negative contrast just bring our highlights out a little bit more there shadows I'm probably going to leave about where they are white let just bring down a fraction and to create this film look I actually want to take some of the blacks out of it again so you can see our blacks here on the histogram are relatively flat so probably about 30 there so quite simple but that's it for our basic adjustments so if I just hit before and after here you can see our edit is well on its way that overall tone is there but this next step is a really important one for creating this dreamy look step two adding our soft dreamy look so this is I guess where the magic happens and as you probably can guess it does involve some negative Clarity but another really important slider as well where this look really comes to life as mentioned I do use negative Clarity the max I like to take this is about there at -25 but I quite like the effect this creates the next slider that I use for this effect is actually some Haze or negative DEH so I'm going to bring that to a similar level about 25 there you can see this really AIDS at creating this hazy dreamy look as well although it's not complete we have taken a lot of saturation out so we'll go through color in a sec but we are well on our way to creating this look but we still need to make some final adjustments I think the key here is actually not to overdo it especially with negative Clarity if you go too heavy on this in both directions this is where your image can start to fall apart a little bit so just be mindful of this My Level might be even overkill for some people but adjust as you see fit and the next step can really help with this step three amplifying light with masking tools so this next step really useful in making sure you don't overdo this effect and that's applying selective edits or masks just to part of the image especially where that light will be hitting or is brightest in your image so this helps keep it a little bit more realistic which is always good in your edits so for our selective edits for this one I'm basically going to kind of add in a radial gradient where our sunlight is of course you can use any of the different masking tools to create this effect where you want but for this one I want it to kind of gradually apply in the direction of the sun there so I'm going to bring up the exposure slightly for this I'm going to bring our temperature a bit warmer to kind of be like sunlight and then I'm going to bring our Clarity and dehaze down again even our texture so this just really softens it what I like to do is basically apply those settings and then just use my amount slider to bring it to a level I'm happy with so you can see there just just really enhances this look but just applies it to the area we want just jumping across to another example here you can see I've already applied the radial gradient with the same settings and I'm just applying this to where that sunlight would be hitting the building similar with our Mist filter where it would Bloom is where those highlights are especially where that sunlight is hitting our bright white keeping some sense of realism to your edits really draws us into the light there as well so the overall before and after there again a nice dreamy edit step four creating your color look so we haven't touched on color yet but this is a really important step in creating this look as well now for me my colors aren't actually too heavy on this style of editing compared to some other styles and I think the key here it really is to really find those unique colors that you like keep working on that and refining it down until you're happy with it so practice makes perfect for this one I'm going to start by bringing up our Vibrance to about 50 when I want to really increase colors I like to use Vibrance and just a little bit of saturation yes this is heavy but that's because I'm going to adjust it in a sec I usually come down to calibration first because this is those major changes we're going to do we're going to bring our Blues more more towards teal there greens there's not much in this so it won't matter too much but usually I'll bring that towards yellow slightly and our Reds slightly towards orange as well so now I'm going to come up to color grading starting with our shadows here I'm actually going to add in a little bit of blue or teal even but just very subtle and I'm actually going to do similar to each probably more blue in our midtones but very subtle and similar in our highlights Maybe a little bit more towards teal but again bringing down that saturation so I like to basically add in blue a cooler tone to the image and then if I need to I'll tweak the white balance warmer if I need to if you need more help understanding the color grading tab I have a video on this so check that out as well but next we're going to move up to color mixer so starting with saturation I'm actually going to remove a lot of the color in this one we mostly have blue and orange and a bit of red anyway but i'm going to take some of that blue out we don't have much green or yellow so I don't need to adjust that too much let's come across to our luminance I'm going to bring up our luminance on the umbrella there slightly blue I'm not going to tweak too much usually if there was green I would bring up these as well which has a nice effect on our green and yellows but none in this image lastly our Hue I will probably just tweak my Blues a little bit so I'm really happy with that this color palette's looking really nice but make sure experiment with your own colors as well lastly just to show you how this edit transfers across I'm going to SN it across to this other image let's go check all except white balance and exposure come across to our other image and you can see I just need to boost our exposure again not too much and again we've created this nice look I would probably turn off the radial gradient on this one because of our Mis filter that I used and the bright sunlight here it's already really intense on this photo I don't need to add in that light too much but again before and after that I can copy across to any of my other photos now last but not least step five adding just the right amount of grain I know this step isn't for everyone but as we are going for more of a film look adding grain really is in my opinion the final icing on the cake I have had some comments on previous videos like Cameron companies spend so much money on making these lenses sharp why would you go and add grain to it and in my opinion it's because we get the best of both world we get these really sharp lenses to work with as a starting point but then you have the freedom to add a bit of character to that if you wish of course you don't have to but for me going for this particular type of edit and this style I really like adding some grain to it my go-to level for this is about around 35 for the amount I bring it up to around 45 for the size and I tend to bring that roughness down a little bit somewhere around 35 38 and looking at the before and after you can see that nice bit of grain added in as well to me this is just the right intensity to get closest to this film type look without overdoing it it is subjective so play around and adjust as necessary so I hope you have enjoyed this one please consider subscribing if you did remember play around with this style really practice and then take it in your own direction to create that own unique style thanks so much for watching keep on creating and keep on going my friends I will catch you in the next one bye for [Music] now changes everything

Channel: TKNORTH

Views: 37,886

Keywords: lightroom tutorials, lightroom photo editing, lightroom tutorial, how to edit like film, how to edit in lightroom, dreamy film look, dreamy film look lightroom, lightroom editing tutorial, adobe lightroom, cinematic editing lightroom, tknorth, tk north

Id: 1mKqt1sld_0

Length: 10min 42sec (642 seconds)

Published: Tue May 21 2024