Finally found the look?
It’s been a couple of weeks now that I’ve been experimenting with the differernt film simulations and jpeg settings on my camera, searching for the “look” I want for my colored images. I wanted something close to the color and tonality of classic chrome — as my camera does not support that film simulation.
I’ve been mainly playing around with ProNeg Standard and ProNeg Hi. I think these two film simulations brings me the closest to the
classic chrome look I want. Provia is just a bit to dull for me and Astia saturates the heck out of the skin’s orange tones when I apply my “S” curve.
ProNeg Standard has always been my starting point in the past. It gives really nice colors to peoples skin in my street photography. But there was always something off with it. I could never really get the “pop” I wanted with my images no matter how hard I try to adjust its contrast. A few weeks back I decided to try out its sister simulation(assuming film simulations are girls) ProNeg Hi as it is a bit closer to classic chrome in the film simulation chart/graph in terms of tonality.

Did some street photography with it on several occasions just to test out different jpeg settings. I think I am happy with the following settings for ProNeg Hi on my color street photography.
Shadows +1
Highlights -2
Color 0
Noise Reduction -2
Sharpness -2
A few images with the above settings…








On my post processing I started using the Vibrancy slider more to desaturate the colors in conjunction with the HSL sliders. Still applying
the “S” curve I learned from Patrick La Roque’s post.
I was getting there… but there was still something missing with it.
As I was searching the good old inter-webs for inspiration and information. I happen to stumbled upon something which I think has the potential to change and massively improve the “look” of my color photos. I was doing some research about the Vibrancy slider in lightroom when I came across
this reddit thread. Someone was asking how to get the same color as these and this. I got the revelation on the first comment…
“Try decreasing vibrance a lot (will lower values other than basic skin tones), deepen blacks, increase clarity, and maybe increase highlights a bit.
Edit: also maybe try adding a bit of light brown toning to the shadows with the split toning slider.”
Particularly…
“…also maybe try adding a bit of light brown toning to the shadows with the split toning slider”.
I was quite taken by this, as I usually use split toning on my black and white photos only to add a very subtle sepia look to them. It never really occurred to me to add shadow toning on my colored images. I then did more research on this(adding brown tones to shadows) and found Justine Montigny a wedding photographer from Grand Rapids, MI on reddit as well which uses this color/shadow toning very effectively.

I tried the technique on all of the street photos that I haven’t yet processed, and lo and behold, with those simple tweaks on the shadow part of the split toning section, it completely transformed those images into something that really “pops”. This is purely subjective though, but for me it adds somewhat a subtle “organic” look to my photos is the only way I can explain it for now. It just adds that something. Here are a few images…




















I’m still currently testing it out on different lighting situations. I’ll definitly be posting more photos processed with this technique and with the settings I mentioned. Hopefully I’ve finally found the “look” that I want.
Photos were taken 2017–07–30. If you like to see more, check out a few of my social accounts here. Thanks for dropping by 😁

