How to Add a Lomo Style Effect to Your Photos



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How to Add a Lomo Style Effect to Your Photos

Lomo sell a range of fun and lo-fi film cameras, but it’s also possible to add a Lomo style effect to your digital photos using Adobe Photoshop.

Many photographers have embraced the quirky and often unpredictable results of these cameras, to the point that Instagram and a wealth of other apps have made it easy to apply these effects to digital photos with a single click. However if you’re feeling a bit more adventurous, you can create you own effects using Photoshop.

While there isn’t one definitive look that says Lomo, they do share some common points, namely the lenses tend to cause vignetting, the film grain of yesteryear is apparent and there’s usually some form of color shift. Bearing that in mind, I’ll show you how to fake the Lomo look.

Add a Vignette

The simplest way to add a vignette in Photoshop is to go to Filters > Lens Correction, however this applies the vignette directly to the image. It’s simple enough to add a vignette to a separate layer and this does offer more flexibility.

How to Add a Lomo Style Effect to Your Photos

Add a new layer to your image and select the Elliptical Marquee tool. Now click and hold at approximately the center point of the image and, while holding down the Alt key, drag your cursor to draw a selection that covers most of the center of the picture. When it looks right, release the mouse and go to Select > Modify > Feather and set the input to 250px, the maximum possible. Next go to Select > Inverse to select the area outside of the ellipse and finally Edit > Fill and set the Use drop down to Black. Kill the selection by going to Select > Deselect.

How to Add a Lomo Style Effect to Your Photos

Right now that’s a bit extreme, but you’ve a few options now. Reducing the layer opacity is the most obvious and might be the result you want. However, you may get better results by setting the layer blending mode to Multiply in combination with reduced opacity. I often use a Soft Light blending mode for vignettes, but Multiply is more inline with the Lomo effect.

Give the Shot Some Grain

In film photography, higher ISO films display more grain much like the noise that appears in digital photos. We could just use the Add Noise filter to dirty up the image a little, but we can produce an effect that’s rather more akin to film grain very easily.

How to Add a Lomo Style Effect to Your Photos

Add a new layer and, if necessary, drag it underneath the vignette layer. Now go to Edit > Fill and select 50% Gray.

How to Add a Lomo Style Effect to Your Photos

We can now go to Filter > Noise > Add Noise and apply the filter to this gray layer. Drag the Amount slider all the way to the right and click the Monochromatic check box.

How to Add a Lomo Style Effect to Your Photos

Now change the blending mode to Overlay and go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur and adjust the Radius slider to soften the noise layer and make it look less digital. A radius of about 1.5 pixels should be about right, but you can set this depending on your preference. Finally reduce the opacity of the noise layer so that it’s not too overwhelming.

Add a Color Shift

While Lomo shots almost invariably exhibit noise and lens vignetting, the type of color shifts seen in the photos varies, largely through different films, but also in part affected the camera and lens used. Some photos will have muted tones, others color casts of varying intensities, while others still can be vibrant and over-saturated.

How to Add a Lomo Style Effect to Your Photos

If you want to mute your image, go to layer > New Adjustment Layer > Vibrance and drag the Saturation slider to the left until it looks as you want.

How to Add a Lomo Style Effect to Your Photos

There are various ways to add a color cast, but that one works in most versions of Photoshop, even from years ago, is to use the Curves feature. Go to Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Curves and then switch the Channel drop down to Red, Green or Blur. You now click on the line at about the midway point and drag it upwards a little. Don’t go too crazy as you want the other colors to still show through.

How to Add a Lomo Style Effect to Your Photos

Finally, if you want a bright and saturated effect, you could use the Vibrance tool again and move the Saturation slider to the right. Alternatively, go to Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Brightness/Contrast and increase both settings. However, perhaps the quickest and easiest way is to duplicate the background layer and change the blending mode to Hard Light or Soft Light.

There you go, a few quick and easy ways to add Lomo style effects to your digital photos and using these simple tips, you can mix and match to create various different effects. Why not head on over to the Lomography site to get some inspiration.