Have you heard about Lomography? If you have seen photos with weird and crazy colors, then you should probably meet lomographs. In a more vivid explanation, photos with false colors, these make up a whole lomograph.
In the early 90s, a group of students discovered a Russian camera, a bit small and complicated Russian camera, known as Lomo Kompakt Automat. The discovery led to artistic experiment on photography showing their unusual frolic shots. After having their photos mounted on panels to form a thousand of Lomographs, vast amount of viewers were astonished.Having been introduced to cameras, more specifically DSLRs, I wanted to shoot scenes using one of the lomocams, such as Holga, and the Lomo itself. The rules in shooting: Just point and shoot! So easy!
Since Lomocams these days became expensive with the fact that these gadgets use film for developing, Photoshop has been a good tool to produce photos that are lomo-alike. With various resources, I was able to learn applying the lomo effect on digital photos.
In these part, you'll learn the process on how to apply the effect of lomocam, and you'll definitely love how the colors pop out!
1st Step: CHOOSING A PHOTO
Open Photoshop, and choose your photo that will be processed! I'm using this photo I shoot a year ago because, there's a huge contrast.
2nd Step:THE LASSO TOOL
Select the lasso tool (L) and create an oval shape into the photo, set the feather (Ctrl + D) to 80 px. This will soften the edge of the lasso you recently made.
3rd Step: SETTING LEVELS
Invert the selection you made using the lasso tool. After inverting, select levels (Ctrl + L) and set value just like below. If you got the step right, a part of the photo darkens, and the focus of the light is in the center.

4th Step: WORKING WITH CURVES
You're done with the levels, we're halfway there! Diselect the marquee (Ctrl + D) to proced in the curves. Open curves (Ctrl + M) then create a slanted "S" on the graph just like below: Click preview to make sure that you'll see the temporary output. Click OK.

5th Step: NEW LAYER WITH BLENDING OPTIONS
Now we're done with Curves. The next process takes place in the layers palette. Create a new layer. fill it with black. Notice that the photo below cannot be seen. Change the blending options of the layer to HUE, and reduce its opacity to 30%. Look at the output, it's quite vintage now!
6th Step: LAB COLOR
Do not forget to MERGE ALL the existing layers, in order for you to proceed in this process. After doing so, you have the output of a dull photo now, go to the menu bar, select Image>Mode>Lab Color. We'll work with the channels now!
7th Step: LAB COLOR LIGHTNESS CHANNEL
We are almost done, the next thing to do is to select the Channels tab in the layer palette, and select the Lightness channel. You'll see that the photo is now black and white, its ok.
8th Step: UNSHARP MASK
After selecting the lightness channel, in the menu bar, go to Filter>Sharpen>Unsharp Mask. Since I liked sharp photos, I set the amount on a higher value, 49%.
9th Step: GOING BACK TO RGB COLOR
Now we're at the peek of this tutorial, we'll see the final output by selecting back the RGB color, go to Image>Mode>RGB Color. Poof! You're done.
Here is my final output: Popping and highly contrasted colors
Don't forget to share your output!
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