Vsco Film Pack 01 06 2016
A review of VSCO Film 06, The Alternative Process collection. After using this pack for a year, it has become my favorite pack for weddings and portraits. VSCO Films, presets for Adobe Lightroom, Photoshop and Aperture. VSCO has presets for applications such as Adobe Lightroom, Aperture or Photoshop. VSCO Film 06 Review Updated November 15th, 2017. Film Pack 6 offers something a bit different from what VSCO has done in. VSCO Film 06 is very much based off of their Modern Film 01 and so. VSCO Membership $19.99 USD / year Start your free 7-day trial. 130+ VSCO Presets. Unlock VSCO’s complete preset library. Film Emulation Presets. Recreate vintage film looks by Kodak, Agfa, and Ilford on mobile. Advanced Photo Editing Tools. Create images you love with exclusive tools like HSL and Borders. Video Coloring.
.Edit.VSCO no longer offers these presets for desktop use. I now use my presets through.I get a lot of emails about how I get my digital images to look the way they do. The truth is that most of it is done in camera, properly exposed images shot in good light is what makes a good image, not the processing.
With that said though, I do edit my images. Ever since VSCO film was released in 2011, I have used their presets for all my editing, I rarely even open photoshop these days.VSCO Film 1,2 and 3 are presets for Lightroom and Photoshop. The three packs have a number of presets made to mimic different film stocks. I use all three packs, which presets I use generally depends on my own mood, i have used and use pretty much all of the presets, but I rarely use more than one colour and one black and white preset per wedding or shoot.Pack 1 has the most classic looks, pack 2 have a few more dramatic looks and pack 3 are presets made to look like instant film (polaroid).Not only has VSCO helped me speed up my processing immensly, it has made me happy with my processing. I generally don’t have to tweak my images at all after I’ve applied the different presets and for someone who shoots as much as i do, that’s amazing.I also use another product from VSCO called VSCO Keys. VSCO Film cut my editing time in half, when I started using VSCO Keys, my editing time was cut in half again. In short VSCO Keys are keyboard shortcuts for Lightroom and using it has helped me speed things up dramatically.My favourite presets are Fuji 400, Fuji 800Z, T-Max 3200 , Ilford Delta 3200 , Superia 100 and Portra 400 NC.
I use the presets in pack 3 for flavour and mainly on individual shots.You can buy all film packs and VSCO Keys here.These images were processed with VSCO Film Pack 01These images were edited withThese images were processed with. My GodWhat an fantastic collection of images.
I’m more moved by your take on people than VSCO, and I think your compositions is so aligned with that feeling. Simple and complicated at the same time. I’m also amazed how honest you are with things like post processing, your work and all this feedback to other photographers, whom you inspire SO much. You (and a few others) take wedding photography to a whole new level.
It’s so inspiring. Anders Zorn comes to my mind. It’s a compliment I hope.
Response to Cam: I don’t think it’s strange at all for Jonas to make this post, and I don’t think this post is about making money (although nothing wrong with that)as Barbara Di Cretico pointed out in the earlier comments, “no filter can gives us your poetry” – Jonas is just being generous, unafraid to share because he understands that true photography isn’t all about pretty presets, if he gave everyone his kit and workflow, no one would still be able to make the same pictures he does. We are all unique in the way we see things! Hi Jonas!Love your work and have been admiring it for some time! I’ve also been using VSCO for a couple of years now and have not been able to achieve consistent editing with it like you have. Half the time I nail it, the other half not so much.
So after awhile, it got me thinking that maybe my in camera work needs, well, work. I was wondering how you deal with varying temperatures – do you use auto white balance? And when you expose, do you try to hit the mid level range of the histogram? Or do you tend to favor the left side of the histogram?
I tend to overexpose my images and I was wondering if I should lay off that habit, lol. Anyways, I believe post editing helps bring your own unique storytelling to life and it’s hard to do that when one can’t post process the way they want it to look.
=/ So yah, any pointers in nailing a well exposed pic in camera so I can make my life easier for post processing? Thank you, thank you, thank you for taking the time to read this and for sharing this post!-jin.
I recently decided to bite the bullet and actually buy all of the VSCO film packs which can transform your digital files a bit and make them look more film like. I have tried and loved since the 1st version for its simplicity and power and I have used Silver Efex Pro in the past for B&W conversions but none of them actually really made the images look much like film, just some contrast and grain and special effects.These VSCO FIlm packs are a bit different as it is not really a “plug in” but more of a powerful tool that can apply your favorite film look to ALL of your images during import into Lightroom. As in, it can save you countless hours doing post processing, especially if you shoot weddings or events and want to give your images a special look and flair.ad#Adsense Blog Sq Embed ImageThese film packs are a bit expensive and there are three packs available, 1, 2 and 3. These are the ultimate in speed, simplicity and performance. I found a cool write-up of it by pro wedding photographers as well as read how much they love VSCO film.As for me, I downloaded them and applied a few filters to a few images to test it out and I like what I see so far.
I can see how this can drastically cut down on processing time. Many of us spend so much time trying to tweak our images to look like film, and for those that do I highly suggest you take a look at VSCO Film. The bad news is that they do not offer a trial. It’s all or nothing. Take a look below at some of the before and afters of using pack 1 and 3. To read more and see even more samples that are much better than mine,Full size shot, Portra 160 VC–One of the many Neopan presets. Each preset has many variables–Below, the 1st image is out of camera using a Nikon V1.
The images below it all have different film presets applied from film pack 03 –which are mostly polaroid and faded films.–This shot of Jay Bartlett was taken with the Ricoh GR, but I applied a VSCO B&W film preset from pack 03 which can be seen below the original shot.–Below is another quick test shot of Debby, and I applied one of the HP5 presets from Pack 01 – I chose this one for the faded look but there are many more HP5 presets that will give you more contrast and bite.–Neopan Preset–Below is a shot that will show you how the color and tone will change with various film presets. The 1st image is out of the Nikon V1, the 2nd is using the Fuji 400H preset and the third a Kodak Portra preset from pack 1.–Fuji FP-100C from Pack 03–Kodak Portra 800–A quick comparison of different presets–Not sure what preset but this was a shot with a Nikon V1 and 32 1.2 at 1.2 – I do believe this was one of the faded Polaroid presets.–and a few more that are marked on the image. Be sure to click them all for larger size! Hi Steve,Apparently this is not a controversial subject.: )After reading all the comments, I decided to do some research.
In case anyone is interested, I’m posting B&W, color slide and color print film examples for all the major digital film stock packages. At least for those I’m aware of — let me know if I missed any.It was tougher than I thought it would be to do a fair (or at least useful) comparison. The packages don’t have all the same films, and uploads need to be full size files to show some of the differences in rendering.Even picking a good image for comparison was tough, since it needs enough color, tonal range and other characteristics to be interestiing across a large range of film simulations.Anyway, here’s a link to part one.
I’ll have the color film examples up in a bit.Cheers!. Just so you know, for any Aperture 3 users out there who are thinking about VSCO Film 1/2 Robert Boyer has done a great comparison of the LR versions with Aperture 3 versions and they are not the same. He has a bit of a rant about it ( – many more posts on how they differ on his site) but basically if you’ve seen the LR presets and think I’ll get those for my Aperture workflow – don’t. Check them out first because they are widely different.
As one poster mentions at the start of this thread Aperture uses real film grain scans to emulate, erm, the film grain (it doesn’t have a ‘grain’ slider). Other issues are just how different the presets make the same files look in terms of colour saturation, split toning (I’m stealing quotes here by the way) etc.If you like them they go for it, just don’t expect the Portra 400 preset on LR and A3 both look – well – like Portra 400. Funny, I just spent hours triying to get that colour cast out of my Ektar neg scans, minimize grain and have that very light fog disappear, and now I read that people get excited enough to spend money and time just to apply all those defects on perfect digital image files. As others said, if you want the film look, shoot film.
It’s hard work (from being limited to 36 or 12 exposures to scanning and repairing files, or worse, enlarging negs in your wet lab), but results are unique. And if pictures come out the way you love them, it’s mostly been your work, not the talent of some software engineer at Nikon or Adobe.
I shoot digital most of the time, but from time to time I pull out my good old F100, RolleiCord or ‘Flex, and create all of that grain, colour cast, dust and missing details that makes film look the way it looks: unique. I’m in agreement with some of the people above thats these don’t look like properly exposed film shots. I’ve used the app on Iphone for fun but never once was struck on the images looking like real film.
If anything they try to produce the look of a photo that has been sitting around for 20 years or shot with expired polaroid film.There will probably never be a conversion software that makes digital files look completely like film for the simple fact that one is analogue and the other isn’t. High end digital music players sound great but they will never have the depth of a mint record on a high end phonograph. It’s the same with film vs. Digital.I fully support altering digital files to give a individualized look but unfortunately you can’t straddle the fence and hope to have film results. You have to fall on one side or the other.
If you want a film look then shoot film. I have, and use, all three VSCO LR presets. Having shot film exclusively until two years ago, I will say that the VSCO presets rarely give a true film look. Unless of course we’re talking about expired/poorly processed/poorly exposed film. The Portra presets are way off IMHO.Having said that, I love the presets. They can be really helpful in quickly adding a look or style to an image.
But sometimes I like trendy and I like fun. Sometimes I have an image that’s decent and a VSCO preset takes it up a level.
I’ve also learned a lot about lightroom by using the presets and looking at what they alter.I think you need to consider the VSCO presets not so much as pure film emulation but rather an idea of film photography with the understanding that under some circumstances (the photo and preset combo) you will achieve end results that are close to film. I agree with everything Steve says and VSCO Film is one of the best things I’ve bought. I nearly always start out using a VSCO film preset as a base and manipulate from there, normally reducing or taking the grain off. You don’t need to use them to copy films, I use them mainly as giving me a headstart to get to the look I want.
They save me a lot of time in post processing and I get a much better result than I was getting without them so although they are expensive they’re easily worth it to me.A word of warning, the custom profiles (for Canon, Nikon and Fuji X) are in a different league to the standard profiles. I own an Olympus E-M5 OMD, a Panasonic GF3, a Fuji X100 and Canon 5d mk ii. The results with VSCO film when applied to the 5d mk ii files are amazing, really good with the X100 and hit and miss with the Olympus OMD and Panasonic GF3.Pretty much everything in the last 9 months on my Flickr account has a VSCO film preset as a starting point, If there’s any you like the style of, I’m happy to detail what preset was used and what processing was done on them:. I don’t think we should use software to replicate film, but rather to create a different mood in our digital files. These solutions should not be considered an alternative to film, but an addition to a digital workflow.
If we want files that look like portra 160, we’re better of to shoot portra 160 film! If people expect to get tri-x resaults with the click of a button, they probably will not.
But it could be a good way to set a spesific mood in a photo, especialy with some tweaking of the pre-sets. “If we want files that look like portra 160, we’re better of to shoot portra 160 film!”Maybe. But shooting film is becoming increasingly inconvenient and expensive as time passes. To me the holy grail would be a digital camera which was capable of flawless film emulation, because film has a unique look which is aesthetically pleasing to me, but shooting actual film, getting it developed, scanned etc is a hassle.Someone made a good point along the lines of, Why buy an expensive digital Leica just to ruin the images with film emulation presets. For me, much of the appeal of a rangefinder is its simplicity, its size, its quietness, how it handles, the way it feels in the hand, and most importantly, how the process of using one affects the resulting image.
I don’t necessarily want my photos to look like flawless snapshots of a scene. I like a little mystery. I don’t always want or need perfect focus, balanced exposure, straight horizons, and perfectly smooth, grain-free blur. Imperfection is good. Film can look good or bad depending on the age of the film, how it was shot, how it was processed, how it was developed, how it was scanned.Each VSCO preset has several versions. The default version usually has good contrast, strong blacks, little to no fading, very slight grain.
Then you have the choice to use a + or a – version, which is sort of like a film push or a film pull. Or you can mix it up and make your own combinations. They’re very fun. I think that one of the problems with digital cameras is that sensors tend to be very similar from camera to camera, so using these presets lets you create different looks very quickly. VSCO doesn’t force you to use a black and white with faded blacks.
It’s an option. Taking a picture is already an artifice there is no such thing as pure. You choose the film, the sensor, the lens, the aperture, the angle the subject, the way you print it the paper etc etc etc digital manipulation is just another means to an end, if you dont like how it looks then that is fine. But don’t criticize it for what its not. Think about it, take a look at some of the great photographers or great painters, you might not like the style of some as maybe being too fantastic, but that is always a line that you draw. All images are artificial, they are products of machines-chemicals etc, and cultural products as well.
Regards, miguel. First, thanks Steve for sharing!
I’ve been following your site for years, and appreciate the benign commentary from you and most of the other people who follow too.I usually don’t comment unless a particular topic strikes me and this is one of those topics, probably because I’m riding the fence on going for a digital M at some point. As one who uses film exclusively, I have to agree that most of these don’t look like film to me either (except the photo of Debby with HP5). That is, unless it’s underexposed film. The color emulations look washed out, and the b&w lack the contrast, actuance and grainespecially the 3200 speed emulations. I am not familiar with what you can alter with the VSCO software, such as adjusting for push/pull, different developers, papers, grain, toning, etc, so maybe with those adjustments it can get closer to what seems more what I would expect to see using various film types. (As an aside, I’m sure you know you can get film to kind of look like the photos above too, depending on your developer, agitation, paper, scanning technique, etc.
And depending on what you’re trying to achieve. These are just not what I would want FOR ME.)I do like the digital versions without the emulations, however. I think if I ever make the move to a Leica M, I’ll embrace digital for what it is, appreciate the character of the sensor, and not try to make it “look like film” but make it look like a Leica M. If I want the look of film, I’ll use film. Thanks Guillaume.
The colors in your samples are certainly vivid and make your point well. Here is what I don’t get about shooting film. I should mention first that I began taking photos in the 1960s when I worked in a store with the biggest film processing business in my state. I have shot a bazillion rolls of film including slide, color negative, b&w and infrared. When I enlarge your shots I see immediately that it is film. Details begin to break down and grain becomes obvious. With film, what you see is all you get and enlarging only stretches everything out including detail and sharp lines that weren’t all that sharp to begin with (not always the lens’ fault).
With a full frame raw digital image, enlarging seems to just go deeper into the data base and reveal more detail. Sharp lines stay sharp, details remain crisp, more details emerge. I have done big enlargements of a shot taken with an M9 and 35mm Summicron in which 1 foot tall bushes more than a mile away are clearly visible. I am not a scientist and have not done any kind of microscopic analysis but I am guessing that the pixels in a full frame sensor are much smaller than grain in any film I have seen and that enables the digital camera to capture much more detail.I also understand that some people like the film look. I’m not dissing that. Just not my style.
Puppy love 2 the spacening song. If you are a Conon, Nikon, and Fuji user then VSCO rocks. The Pro presets supports those cameras and adjusts the color processing appropriately for each camera thus ensuring the same analog looking output (in theory at least).The default preset which can be used for other cameras is hit and miss with the results though. Also the whole grain system is very basic and assumes uniformity across the photo which is much different in analog.I like the Exposure 4 outputs better for some of the films compared to VSCO but then again you cannot beat the built in ease of use, fast workflow option of VSCO.
Thanks for showing us some samples of the software. In terms of the BW simulations, looks to me like a a flat scan that hasn’t had a curves adjustment. Both an optical print and properly adjusted scan should have better contrast. That’s fine if it’s the look you’re going for, but unconvincing as film to me.On a related note, I find that when camera-scanning Tri-X with my Panasonic G3 and macro lens, 13 mp (with sides cropped) is not adequate to resolve the grain present on the neg. Not saying there is or isn’t a digital-equivalent 13 mp worth of detail present on a Tri-X neg (because I don’t want to start that argument, obviously a lot depends on your developer) but if someone really want’s to emulate the look of film, they need a pretty high-MP image to start with in order to truly simulate grain. But if color is all you’re going for, maybe not so much.
The trouble I have with VSCO presets that I’ve seen is they usually look so flat and LO-FI compared to the actual “real” film emulsions. Take the supposed Fuji Superia preset shown here, anybody that’s ever shot even a few rolls of Superia would laugh at the emulation as it is less vivid/saturated than the ooc shot even. I hear ya Steve, unfortunately most consumer flatbeds give sub-par results for the time they take to run which often makes film more trouble than it’s worth for anyone without a darkroom or dedicated film scanner – while at the same time giving a distorted impression of what film looks like. These days, if I have to scan 35 mm I use a 16 mp 4/3 digital with a macro lens and get better results than a mid-range flatbed like the v700 – but the G3 still doesn’t fully resolve the grain on 400 speed film. The grain shows up, but is mixed in with digital noise and pixelation – an odd combo.But I digress, people can easily judge for themselves by searching flickr for images tagged with a specific film type and compare with the shots above.
I liked my V700 but it wasn’t great. It was good that you can scan 4×5 and several 120’s or 35mm but beyond convenience, those inexpensive Plustek dedicated 35mm scanners would do better with 35mm. They seemed to scan up to 2400-2600 dpi.
I really need to try scanning with my camera. I have a great Canon macro but I haven’t came up with a good solution to use it. I would think it could do a good job with 120 and a Full Frame DSLR but I need to build or buy some type of older to keep the film flat. What holder are you using for 35mm?. Daniel – my camera-scanning setup isn’t pretty – I hacked a 35 mm film strip holder from an old HP scanner, put it on an 11×14 light table, and use a tripod to parallel the film/light table surface. This way I can feed the entire roll through the holder while snapping each frame.
A bit of a pain to set up so I usually wait till I have a few rolls to run. I hear placing a mirror on the table helps to set the sensor parallel to the film. This is what it looks like:I’m sure plenty of folks have figured out better ways of doing this. Thanks Steve for your tests, personally coming from the decades of shooting film and adapting to digital, I find all these film shooters who go on the defensive about digital emulators pretty funny.“Maybe you should shoot more film to realize these do not look like film or at least not film that has been exposed and processed properly”.
Professional photographers have broken all the rules in terms of what is considered “properly processed or properly exposed film” to achieve a variety of effects. I don’t think you can truly critique the validity of digital film emulators based on a few test shots.The reality is digital emulators will improve, as will people’s tastes change over time. The hard truth is film will become an increasingly fringe product, the economics of the film business will force film to go the way of wet plate photography. Like dark room techniques the final appearance of images produced by digital emulators rely largely on the artist/photographer using the software. I’ve seen photography exhibits and gallery shows with digital works that are indistinguishable from film. Even profession critiques were confounded when presented with two works that aren’t tagged as digital or film.I was certainly one of those purists who would go on rants about film, be after seeing the demise of Kodakchrome, Agfacolor, Polaroid, Velvia, Provia, the list goes on; if we want to our prints to look like these film types in the future we need to learn and embrace digital emulators going forward. In fact, I believe that “film look presets” should be considered a familiar starting point, something like a template where to inspire you and get you jump started onto where you want to take your images.
In the digital era, it is just ridiculous that we want to clinically emulate the look of this or that film emulsion. I understand the convenience of a known point of reference, but, in the end, it should be more about creativity than blindly emulating looks from the past. If you really want film lookthen just shoot film! There’s way more about film than the grain or the contrast. There’s an overall experience and frame of mind, and that is waaaaay more important than emulating tri-x pushed to iso 1600 in a lightroom preset. Of course they show you the best results (of course) they can reasonably obtain.
With real world images one might be easily disappointed especially since they mention that they emulate many actual films. The truth is that they do not. Many of their conversions really do not look like the films they claim.
Vsco Film Pack
Again, forget about grain. They are really just pushing over the generic grain slider in Lightroom and make no attempt at overlaying a texture, etc. That they should do (smart object style). There is one exception giving that they are using LR grain, it can produce grain that does look like TX400 but TMAX, PanF, etc. Are an issue.Don’t get me wrong, some of them look good and if you like their look, it might be worth it, but if you really want to emulate Portra, do a quick search on the web for other LR actions or check our DXO’s product. They actually make an real attempt at the grain.