Tips – Vintage & Light Leaks

Every Designer and Photographer has their own style of retouching and post-production when it comes down to photos. It’s interesting that my best bud, David Moreno and I, always argue as who’s the better “retoucher.” He has his style, I have mine.

For example, Fabio from Abduzeedo posted on his blog, “A trend that is becoming more and more popular in Photography recently is a vintage/film/retro style. You can see examples in Urban Outfitters, Nylon Mag, Anthropologie, etc. One of the major elements in this style is the light leak.” and he continues to post a tutorial (which I included below and inspired this one) about Light Leaks.

I’ve been asked quite a few times as to how I touch-up the photos I take (or clients) to give it that certain feel. So here are a few bullet points as to how I accomplished the photo above with that vintage feel we all love in Adobe Photoshop.

This is for intermediate users, meaning you should already know where everything is. If you’re a beginner, download the actions below, install them in Photoshop and play around with the settings til’ you get it just right and watch the videos.

• Download the Photoshop Actions by Manicho below.
• Adjustment Layers: Curves and Selective Color are your friends.
• Curves: See the image below and play around with those settings
• Selective Color: Mess around with the white, neutral and black channels be taking away blues and/or yellows.
• Color Balance: Also play around with white, neutral and black channels.
• Creamy glows with the brush tool for a bit of lighting effect are on these photos aswell.
• Depending on the effect/style you can choose to Sharpen or Blur the photos.
• Checkout 30 Interesting Light Leak Shots on Abduzeedo.
• You can add a vinyette to the photo with around 30 % opacity for additional lighting effect.

Below are a few more samples from my Flickr page that I have applied one or all these effects to. Also make sure you watch these two quick vids for even easier ways.