Q&A Tuesday: How to Achieve the Bright and Airy Film Look in Photoshop

Q&A Tuesday is a new blog series starting today. You ask the questions, I answer them. Your questions can be about photography, how to prepare for a session, personal questions like what's my favorite color, or what does my cat look like. Ask me anything. You have the whole week to ask questions via my Facebook, blog, or email. My favorite 3-5 questions will get answered the following Tuesday.

There were some great questions this week. You ready? Let's get started.*********************

How to Achieve the Film Look in Photoshop

"How do you get that bright and airy film look to your photos?"

Dang! I didn't think I'd be revealing one of my top secret sauces today. Here are two crucial steps.

1) In camera, I tend to overexpose my photos by half a stop. For those of you not familiar with exposure, it means that I'm making the photo brighter than what is typically considered precise exposure.

2) I also run a curve like this one in Photoshop. You can do this in Lightroom also. This curve will brightens the mid-tones and lighten the shadows.

That's it! Not too hard right? Try it on your photos and let me know how it works out.

curve setting in photoshop for film look

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"If you could pick only one lens, which would it be?"

It really depends on what I'm photographing. If it's portraits, definitely the 85mm lens is my go-to. But when I'm traveling,

doing my everyday thing, I often prefer the 35mm. This is for when I'm on a full frame camera.

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"I'd like to know more about your editing. This is an area I'd like to streamline."

I used to be so slow at editing, and my skin tones were always inconsistent from photo to photo, UNTIL I started using Lightroom (LR).

Lightroom is an inexpensive software, which allows you to make adjustments on one photo, then sync and apply those same

adjustments to other photos within the set. Once I finish with LR and export, I use photoshop to retouch, add some contrast and I'm more or less done.

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