Posts Tagged ‘Film effect’

A film rebate border refers to the black border around each frame of film, which often contains the name of the type of film. If you were shooting film, to include this border as part of the image would mean scanning the film yourself. Film processing companies would only scan or print the actual image area of the film, and wouldn't include the border areas.

With digital though, we can quite easily add in a faux film rebate border ourselves. Adding a border can act as a nice way to frame the image. It can also be used for adding copyright and branding text, rather than putting a watermark over the image.

In this article I'll go over how you can create a medium format style film rebate border using Photoshop CC / CS. We'll create a flexible border that can be easily resized to accommodate images of different aspect ratios and dimensions. And I'll also cover using a scan of a real film frame, which can be an easier and more realistic (though less flexible) solution in many cases.

Image incorporates Film rebate by Graham Richardson (licensed CC-BY)

Photos with a soft, low contrast hazy look seem to be very popular at the moment. You can purchase packs of film presets for most image editing software that allow you to easily create this look.

I've also seen several Photoshop tutorials that show how to create a similar look, making use of various adjustment layers. However, the look can also be achieved using only RGB curves, which are available in Adobe Camera RAW, Lightroom, Photoshop, GIMP, and the majority of image editing software. No need to purchase anything additional, and no need for multiple layer Photoshop documents.

In this article I'll cover both creating the hazy look in-camera and using RGB curves. Plus, I'll explain why the curves adjustments create the effect, so you'll better understand how you can modify the curves to fine-tune the effect.