Portra 400 V b – an upgrade to the style

This study is based on the contrast and colorscape of Portra 400 film, but there is no added grain and sharpening and microcontrast are actually same for all my latest styles. I might later on tune this style further, but it works as is. And if the saturation isn’t too much to your taste, this is beautiful style to use for many kind of images.

Portra 400 V b Capture One -style

Comment below if you liked it.

PhaseFinal version
Colorscape or what I tried to emulateKodak Portra 400 color negative film
ContrastMedium contrast
SaturationHigh
Author’s notesBeautiful saturated colorscape.
Best used for (genre of photography)Experimental, lifestyle, portraits, landscapes.
Download linkhttps://drive.google.com/file/d/14ipR-n4grLCqwTmVdMLvoF0YxWreZLh7/view?usp=sharing
Portra 400 V b Capture One -style

PortraMood Capture One -style

This style I is a replication of an for me unknown look I found in the internet. I really don’t know the photographer, I don’t know the medium it was taken with (though I think it was taken on film), and I don’t know what kind of post processing was involved in the final image that I copied this look from. What I know is that it looked beautiful and gave me the impression of a certain Portra 160 look that I have been working through.

Continue reading PortraMood Capture One -style

Basics Nature Capture One -style

I loved Fujifilm’s Velvia film simulation when I used the X-H1. From the beginning of using Capture One I wanted to make a style that mimics the look of the Velvia film simulation. There were two reasons even while I knew I could get that look for Fujifilm’s raw -files in Capture One. First, I wanted to learn how to tune such a style that works well with nature related subjects like landscapes and animals. Second, I think it is always best to have a style that is not dependent of the camera used.

Continue reading Basics Nature Capture One -style

Some monochrome Capture One -styles

It has been a while since the last post. I have had many ideas for new styles, but many of them just didn’t work the way I wanted and so I actually have made a lot of styles that just are waiting either to be finished somehow or just deleted. During the experiments I have made three monochrome styles that seem to work for me. Two of them are “clean” versions, very similar to each other but still different enough to name them 1 and 2. I have added to many of my black and white styles some grain to even the contrast or to make them look “film like”. These clean versions are free from additional grain as there are those moments you just want to have a clean version to start from. The third monochrome style was from an experiment to make a flat, or matte, looking style out of my never published third iteration of Earth Colors -style. While the color version still waits approval from me, the black and white version looked nice enough for publishing.

Hopefully some of these gives you ideas for your own style or even work as is. It probably never is bad to have choices and here they are, free as always.

And here is the link:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Pru3q49ZyfU-MNMPL6GC9kVwXkpOUY11/view?usp=sharing

There is nothing magical or original in these, so I don’t publish many photos to show them, try them yourself. Below is one photo processed with Monochrome Clean 1 and Monochrome Flat. The featured photo is processed with the Flat -style.

Monochrome Clean 1 (left) vs. Monochrome Flat (right)

About Nikon’s SOOC colors

This is just a short pondering of the SOOC Nikon colors. There are six different main color profiles, Picture Controls, in Nikon Z cameras. Of course there are also many filter-kind of profiles, but as they are more like special filters, I do not count them to the main profiles.

The main profiles are (in no particular order) Standard, Neutral, Vivid, Portrait, Landscape and Flat. Coming from Fujifilm ecosystem having used and tweaked a lot of different film simulations, I am used to the idea of having different color profiles for different purposes.

Continue reading About Nikon’s SOOC colors

Basics Portrait Capture One -style

During the time I used a Fujifilm camera I used a lot of energy deciding which of the film simulations work for me best. Surprisingly the one film simulation that I rejected in the beginning started to please me more and more. And that was the film simulation Astia. I liked Pro Neg High for people photos and some others for colorful landscapes for example, but again and again I found so many faces for the Astia film simulation that it just kept coming back and in the end it was the film simulation I used on daily basis.

The main purpose mentioned for that film simulation is portrait because of it’s colors and tone curves, but it worked well for landscapes and with some tweaking I found it worked with everyday subjects best of all the film simulations (subjective, I know).

I wanted to have a similar style to be used with my recent camera’s raw-files and baked a style for Capture One. This style is quite similar to the Astia. The basis I made this style on was my Natural Luma -style. And the colors are matched as well as possible, though these never are exact copies. Especially one can find differences in certain blue hues and the skin gets a bit redder here than with the Astia film simulation. I didn’t name the style after the Astia, but naming it “Portrait”, or more precisely “Basics Portrait”, according to the idea of the style’s origin’s purpose to be aimed for portrait photography.

As always I share my styles and hopefully you find it useful as is or tweaked to your taste. The download link is here (updated with a new version 1.7.2022):

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1SmnAgdrpoDOLnzMmgabFcbNXU1-SqbdE/view?usp=sharing