The Art Of Faking It

Whether you love Ilford HP5, Fuji Velvia or Kodak Portra there are many ways to get the look of classic film with the convenience of digital.

- Rob Cherry

Emulating the look of film with a digital camera can be challenging, but there are plenty of options available to recreate the vintage look and feel of classic films like Ilford HP5, Velvia and Kodak Portra. The film look has become very popular with wedding, portrait and street photographers in recent years and can add a cinematic feel to an image delivering strong or soft contrast, deep or subtle colours, and film-like grain. It can also help to deliver emotion and realism.

One way of achieving the look is to use a camera with built-in film simulation modes. Fujifilm cameras are a great example as the film profiles they offer have been developed through years of experience. This allows you to change the look and feel of the image without the need for any post processing. Monochrome is also wonderfully handled in more recent models like the X-T2 and the X-Pro 2 with the ACROS film mode, which adds a fantastic grain-like texture that enhances the conversion.

Choosing an image to convert takes some thought. Some styles of photography suit film simulations better than others (as mentioned above). Portraits and urban images work well when converted, adding a classic film effect that can bring your images to life and give your portfolio a definitive look.

Film effects using Photoshop 

For intermediate Photoshop users there are several ways to recreate the film look using either Adobe Camera Raw with raw files or Adjustment layers in Photoshop. One method I particularly like for adding film effects to colour or monochrome images is adding a channel mixer adjustment layer in overlay mode – that way you can create your own colour maps and save them as presets.