Anyway to emulate Buffalo 66 Ektachrome look in LR/PS?

[james_mixon]

buffalo 66 - Google Search

 

Absolutely love how this was shot. I found out it was shot on

35mm 5239 (160 ASA daylight) normally processed Ektachrome

 

I'm having a hard time putting my finger on the look, and was wondering if anyone could help me out on how to get something similar in LR, or is there a preset out there that could get me half way or something?

[Bill C]

I'm having a hard time putting my finger on the look...

 

Hi, I just took a look at the first few images, in particular the first - a monochrome movie poster. In the world of prints, it looks like the paper was "fogged," so that it doesn't have any clean whites. Or you could think of it as paper that has gotten stained - it's got a dingy white, at best.

 

I've barely ever used Lightroom, but I think it has a function called tone curves, or something to that effect. If you were to go to that set of curves then click in a handful of adjustment points near the top, you should probably be able to keep most of the curve the same but limit the highest part (white) to perhaps 90% or so - you just want to cut it off flat; whatever satisfies you.

 

The color images have something of the same characteristic, but in the lighter skin tones a lot of them have what we would call "cold" highlights. "Cold" is in the artist's sense, meaning a sort of bluish or cyan cast. When you use the curves to limit maximum whiteness, you probably have an option to do this separately for each of red, green, and blue. To get this "coldness," try lowering the top of the red curve a bit more, and perhaps raise the green a little.

 

The other big thing is that they used low color saturation, so try the same thing in Lightroom. I haven't actually done these, so it's just an educated guess at this point.

 

I've got to say that I don't care much for this type of look - to me it says "bad processing" or "poor storage conditions," or just lousy color materials. Prior to about the 1980s a lot of color papers had really poor image stability (color fading) and tended to pick up a yellowish "base stain;" they were not like this originally, but after some years of storage this is what they turned into. So I would guess this is the look the filmmakers were after. If you're looking for plug-ins, try looking for "old print effects," and the like. Best of luck.

[james_mixon]

Hi, I just took a look at the first few images, in particular the first - a monochrome movie poster. In the world of prints, it looks like the paper was "fogged," so that it doesn't have any clean whites. Or you could think of it as paper that has gotten stained - it's got a dingy white, at best.

 

I've barely ever used Lightroom, but I think it has a function called tone curves, or something to that effect. If you were to go to that set of curves then click in a handful of adjustment points near the top, you should probably be able to keep most of the curve the same but limit the highest part (white) to perhaps 90% or so - you just want to cut it off flat; whatever satisfies you.

 

The color images have something of the same characteristic, but in the lighter skin tones a lot of them have what we would call "cold" highlights. "Cold" is in the artist's sense, meaning a sort of bluish or cyan cast. When you use the curves to limit maximum whiteness, you probably have an option to do this separately for each of red, green, and blue. To get this "coldness," try lowering the top of the red curve a bit more, and perhaps raise the green a little.

 

The other big thing is that they used low color saturation, so try the same thing in Lightroom. I haven't actually done these, so it's just an educated guess at this point.

 

I've got to say that I don't care much for this type of look - to me it says "bad processing" or "poor storage conditions," or just lousy color materials. Prior to about the 1980s a lot of color papers had really poor image stability (color fading) and tended to pick up a yellowish "base stain;" they were not like this originally, but after some years of storage this is what they turned into. So I would guess this is the look the filmmakers were after. If you're looking for plug-ins, try looking for "old print effects," and the like. Best of luck.

Ah, that's a great start. I'm going to give this a shot.

 

Do you think it's grainy? Something about it seems...less "sharp" than digital images?

[Bill C]

I wouldn't want to try to judge graininess from images on thhe web. But I think you're right about the lack of sharpness - I don't know how the filmmaker would do this; perhaps it's an artifact of how someone got some images onto the internet. But I did roughly imitate the (lack of) sharpness by using a small amount of Gaussian blur on a test image.

 

Earlier I suggested to flatten off the top of a "curve" but after playing a bit I think it's better to just lower the top of the curve. Per some of the film examples found in your search, you might want to limit the brightest areas to pixel <190 (or about 75%). After this, midtones seem too dark, so you could use "curves" to boost that midtone contrast back in. This lets the shadow areas get sort of murky, plus it flattens out the skin highlights, much like in the internet examples.

 

After drastically lowering the color saturation, and maybe pushing a bit of cold tones into the skin highlights, this might get you fairly close.

[james_mixon]

I wouldn't want to try to judge graininess from images on thhe web. But I think you're right about the lack of sharpness - I don't know how the filmmaker would do this; perhaps it's an artifact of how someone got some images onto the internet. But I did roughly imitate the (lack of) sharpness by using a small amount of Gaussian blur on a test image.

 

Earlier I suggested to flatten off the top of a "curve" but after playing a bit I think it's better to just lower the top of the curve. Per some of the film examples found in your search, you might want to limit the brightest areas to pixel <190 (or about 75%). After this, midtones seem too dark, so you could use "curves" to boost that midtone contrast back in. This lets the shadow areas get sort of murky, plus it flattens out the skin highlights, much like in the internet examples.

 

After drastically lowering the color saturation, and maybe pushing a bit of cold tones into the skin highlights, this might get you fairly close.

Thank you! Yeah, I have a copy of the movie, so I can definitely say there's some lack of sharpness in certain scenes, but others have a lot -- I think it depends on what lens he was using to be honest.

 

I'll give this stuff a shot when I get home!