A retro, calm and muted Photoshop action

When I edit my photos I’ll often mute down the contrast and colours and try to make everything a little more… calm. Calm and ‘filmish’. Like it could have been taken in 1971.

There are Japanese scientists at Canon and Nikon etc tearing out their hair right now because of people like me – they’ve spent their whole professional careers optimising everything in order to give us really black blacks and incredible dynamic range, and here I am throwing it back in their faces! I hope they don’t take it personally – I like the ‘proper’ colours too, honest!

If I’m using Photoshop to do this I tend to use the ‘Selective Color’ adjustment mode – it’s a really quick and easy way of getting results – I’ve mentioned it before here.

I recently decided to make some Photoshop Actions to speed up the process even more so thought I’d share them with you (there’s a link at the end to download).

You can see how it looks in the examples below – they’ll look different depending on what sort of photo you’re starting with (SOOC stands for ‘straight out of camera’)…

Some photos will give very subtle results – these are adjustment layers though so you can always up the sliders to get a stronger look. They make for a good starting point with a photo anyway, if this is the sort of effect you’re after.

Here you go then, here’s a Photoshop action for you containing 7 different calm, muted looks for your photos…

Calm and carrying on – Photoshop action

And if you need a helping hand, here’s a guide on how to run and install a Photoshop action.

What sort of processing do you do to your digital photos? I’d love to know! 

Ciao x