What is vsco film

A slight hint of green to the highlights and an excellent stock to use for bright light. Kodak Portra Series - The go-to for an everyday film stock. Deep, warm highlights with sunny brown shadows and a touch of gold. Film photography, in its very essence, is as simple as it gets. The art of the image itself comes from crafting a stellar subject. The editing should never take away from the original version of your frame. You want to add, not distract. To mimic a more realistic film look, try darkening the blacks and upping the shadows in your VSCO or Lightroom toggles.

This portrays enough contrast on screen, but emphasizes clarity so no detail is lost. Film pictures are known for their harsh scratches and granular touch. Some people are not a fan of adding grain to digital images, which is fine, but it will help add depth and texture to your picture. AU5 is renowned for producing the most outlandish, over-saturated colors of any negative film since its release in While AU5 boosts all tones, it especially brings warm colors to life, making it ideal for landscape photography over portraiture.

This versatile preset provides an authentic film look with a subtle character. Its cool tones and natural colors are great for snapshots and urban portraits. AV4 has medium contrast and saturation and slightly reddish skin tones. Try increasing the character slider to bump up the contrast slightly and turn the highlights pink, or reducing the character for a slight greenish fade. AV4 is a perfect go-to film for a day trip. Discontinued from the mid s, AV8 is a high-speed consumer film with a classic aesthetic.

It yields a strong fade that cleans up quickly with positive character and multiplies even faster in the negative for a melancholy yet hopeful feel. AV8 has medium contrast and slightly muted color, making it ideal for snapshots and casual portraits. FN16 is a bold, high contrast, high-speed black and white film. Your smartphone photo suddenly has the warm, nostalgic charm of a portrait shot with a manual Canon in the s.

As digital oversharing on Instagram , Facebook , and other social media feeds has become increasingly image-centric, the use of filters has become essential, second nature—and an art form all its own. But that's just how smartphone users interact with filters. How those tools are made is a much different story. Apps like Adobe Photoshop Express are able to port the tricks of traditional picture editing onto your device, but VSCO's app does something different: Its Film X filters recreate the look of analog films like Ektar , Portra , and Kodak Tri-X a favorite of the late street photographer Garry Winogrand.

It's a long process that involves not just coding, but locating old film stock and reverse engineering the pictures captured on it. Example Image : I positioned the lighting in this image to try to convey a feeling of depth and richness, but straight out of the camera, it still felt flat and uninteresting. The Fuji h preset instantly added depth and character to the image. The skin tone is just perfect, and the gradations of colors in the shadow on the chair are so much richer and more interesting now.

Overview: Fuji z film is able to bring out natural, true-to-life skin tones in difficult situations, like low-light, flight-light, or mixed light. The film grain is much more noticeable than with the C or H, but in the right situations it can add a pleasant depth and texture to the image.

It also seems to me to be a little less saturated in the highlights and shadows, which is what makes it capable of evening out skin tones in difficult scenarios. Best For: Low-light or mixed light situations where accurate skin tones are important.

Be careful of: You will lose some saturation and add some graininess with this film, so just be sure that is the look you are trying to achieve. Given that this is digital, by the way, you can also cheat and just edit the lightroom settings after you apply the preset.

Example Image: I took this image with very low, very flat light. You can see in the original that there are major differences in skin tone across the face because of the lighting conditions, in some places looking too green and in others too magenta. The Fuji z film does a beautiful job of cleaning this up. The Kodak film really makes skin tones look glowing and luminous. To my eyes, it looks a little less true-to-life than the Fuji Pro film, but this may be the look you are trying to achieve.

Like the Fuji, in most situations I would recommend starting with the variety. The Kodak Portra is the most balanced and versatile of the bunch, and is often compared to the Fuji h. Overview: Like the rest of the Kodak Pro films, Kodak Portra has very neutral tones which tend towards the warmer side of the spectrum. The is has the least saturated colors of the Kodak Pro films, and the film grain is extremely fine. The skin tones from the Portra are light and luminous — almost glowing.

Be careful of : If you are looking for saturated colors, this is not your film. Example photo : You can really see the impact on skin tones and saturation in this image. Without any retouch work, the skin is incredibly even and luminous. The tone of the blue hat shifts more towards teal, and the purple loses much of its vividness. Overview: PORTRA film hits the sweet spot of saturation, sharpness and contrast, with just a hint of film grain for added depth.

Colors are vivid, skin is glowing. It gets compared a lot to Fuji h. To my eyes, the Portra has a little less texture and depth to it than the Fuji h. The Portra feels shiny and perfect, whereas the Fuji feels more raw, organic and lived-in. But the difference are subtle. Be careful of : This is a great, versatile film and can be used in many situations. Example photo : The Portra film preset here really makes the photo feel full of life and light.

The skin tone feels more natural to me than the Portra , and the saturation levels are perfect. Overview: The Kodak Portra has the same great skin tones, but with added saturation and more noticeable film grain. It does a great job of really making the skin look great in even very difficult lighting situations.

Out of the Kodak Pro color films, this one adds the most character and vibe with added film grain. Best for : Low light, natural portrait photography. Great skin tones with a bit of extra vibe.

Example photo : The Portra really improves the skin tone, adding some much needed luminosity to it. The film-grain also gives it more of a raw feel. It is very similar to Ilford HP5, with fine grain, medium contrast and high sharpness. The is actually a multi-speed film that in reality, is rated at ISO and can be pushed up to ISO in development. But it was discontinued by Kodak in due to limited demand. This gives photographers more of a raw, rough, vintage look.

There is very noticeable levels of film grain, and the loss of details in the shadows that you would expect from pushing it to such high ISO levels. Before you apply a filter, though, just pause and try to visualize what it will do to your photo.

Will it increase saturation or decrease saturation?