How To Make Your Digital Photos Look Like Film - Dehancer
Sometimes digital is necessary, but photos that look digital are not.
Times are tough. The barren wasteland stretches out. In the distance, you can hear a loping V8 interceptor engine. The sound of chains wrapped around leather boots.
Through the dust, he appears. It’s Mel Gibson.
“I just came for the Kodak.”
Look, film is getting pretty pricey - but it’s also in short supply. While I still love indulging in shooting on celluloid, the fact is: it’s not always possible. The warm, grainy, subtle tonality of film, however, is.
I think many of our gripes with digital images come from the colours they produce, and the narrower than ideal dynamic range we tend to end up with in our JPGs.
The solution to this is to emulate a film look, but with the absolutely massive range of lightroom presets, plugins, and LUTs, how do you know where to begin?
The answer, I think, is Dehancer, and that’s because it works with whatever workflow you’re already used to. For example, if you’re used to shooting RAW, and then processing your images in Lightroom, you can use Dehancer’s plugin, choose from a boatload of different film profiles, and then tweak the results.
The flexibility of this is what I really find attractive. You can choose from discontinued AGFA stock, the Kodak and Fuji films that we all know and love, and even some experimental films, and then you can tweak the grain, halation, and colours to match your vision.
If you’re not into lightroom, you can also use their plugins for Capture One, Affinity Photo, or Photoshop - but even more easier and betterer, you can also use a new standalone version of Dehancer Online… called Dehancer Online! It’s so easy to throw your photos in, slap Portra 400 on them, and call it a day. You can also go super crazy with it and create really unique looks in a very intuitive way.
I prefer the lightroom plugin because it makes it easy for me to batch stuff. I can apply my lens corrections, upright transforms, and crops, and then align everything to a specific aesthetic.
Oh - did I mention they have a colour grading plugin for video as well? I did a wee video about that… which you can watch below :)