Film Emulation Lightroom Presets

Presets, profiles and color

A Lightroom preset is essentially a collection of editing decisions. Depending on the individual collection, these decisions may involve tone curves, color adjustments, color grading, grain and other parameters.

Some of our collections also use custom profiles. Profiles work at a different level in Lightroom and allow us to develop color relationships that cannot always be created through the standard editing controls alone. When combined with the adjustments contained in a preset, they provide more flexibility in shaping the overall color response of an image.

The technical side of this process is important, but most of the work lies in testing and judgement.

We test our looks on portraits, landscapes, mixed lighting, deep shadows, pale northern light and strong summer sun. During development, a preset may look convincing on one photograph and fail completely on another. That is usually a sign that more work is needed.

A useful photographic tool needs to survive outside the photograph on which it was created.

Our approach to film emulation

We use the term film emulation with some caution.

A digital sensor and a photographic emulsion record light in fundamentally different ways. Film grain is a physical part of the image-forming process, while digital noise has another origin and structure. The appearance of an analogue photograph is also affected by exposure, development, chemistry, scanning and printing.

There is another aspect that is often overlooked. Most of us did not experience the history of film photography by examining negatives directly. We encountered photographs as darkroom prints, reproductions in magazines, books, exhibition prints, cinema stills, family albums and, later, scans of very different quality.

Our visual memory of film is therefore complicated. It contains both the characteristics of photographic materials and all the processes through which those photographs reached us.

This broader history is important to The Digital Darkroom. A particular film stock can provide the starting point for a collection, but so can a printing process, a darkroom technique or a certain period in the history of photographic color. We are interested in how these references can inform contemporary digital photography and become practical tools for photographers working today.

Working with the presets

Presets respond to the photograph they are applied to. Exposure, white balance, lighting conditions and the colors already present in the scene all influence the result. Different camera sensors also interpret color differently.

We recommend treating the preset as the beginning of the editing process. After applying a look, we usually start with exposure and white balance, then make smaller adjustments according to the photograph. Where a collection includes an adjustable profile, the profile amount can be used to make the underlying color character more subtle or pronounced.

This way of working is closer to how we approach editing ourselves. The preset establishes a set of color and tonal relationships, while the final decisions remain connected to the individual photograph.

Why film continues to matter

The continuing interest in film is sometimes described as a reaction against digital photography, but that explanation feels too simple.

Digital photography has given photographers extraordinary freedom. We can work faster, photograph in lower light and make technical adjustments with a degree of precision that was previously impossible. None of this has made the history of photographic materials irrelevant.

Photography has always evolved through a mixture of technology, limitation and individual interpretation. Every material introduced its own possibilities and restrictions, and photographers learned to work within them. Over time, these materials created distinct visual languages.

Many of those languages remain relevant because they concern fundamental photographic questions: how color creates atmosphere, how contrast directs attention, how texture affects our perception of an image and how technical choices influence emotional experience.

Film emulation is one way of continuing that conversation within digital photography.

Explore Film Emulation Presets for Lightroom

The Film Emulation collection brings together Lightroom presets and profiles inspired by analogue film, historic color processes and different traditions of photographic image-making.

The collections vary considerably in character. Some concentrate on restrained color and natural skin tones, while others explore stronger palettes, unusual processes and more experimental approaches to photographic color.