[Alnjpn]

Can't believe that smoke is reaching you down in NZ!!

Some nice photos from everyone. Its interesting how cutting the blacks give a more film like look - Its kind of counter intuitive.

[Kozlok]

I've been processing a bunch of photos, and I found out that lightroom essentially has this as a preset. Under Color presets, there is Matte.



And here's what it does:

[GUB]

Can't believe that smoke is reaching you down in NZ!!

The weatherman tonight suggested it was dust from the dust storm the other day. Could be either - smoke getting here is quite common.

[GUB]

Looks like the preset is doing the same as us - tweaking the tone curve.

Attached Images

 

[BigMackCam]

Looks like the preset is doing the same as us - tweaking the tone curve.

Possibly... but, given the tone curve appears to remain linear, my guess is it's a black level adjustment instead - although that has much the same impact as raising the left hand point of the tone curve above zero. As is the case with most raw developers, there's usually more than one way to achieve the same or similar effect...

[Kozlok]

Here are the adjustments made by the Matte preset.



Here's a photo of a stranger the way I would normally process it.



And with Matte applied, no further adjustments.

[GUB]

Here are the adjustments made by the Matte preset.



Here's a photo of a stranger the way I would normally process it.



And with Matte applied, no further adjustments.

Almost exactly what we were doing at the black end. Pulling the white back is interesting.

[Kozlok]

Almost exactly what we were doing at the black end. Pulling the white back is interesting.

Indeed. The bit I found quite interesting is the OP had asked, how does he achieve this matte film like effect...and there it is in LR labeled matte and everything.

[BigMackCam]

Indeed. The bit I found quite interesting is the OP had asked, how does he achieve this matte film like effect...and there it is in LR labeled matte and everything.

I don't remember that preset being available in earlier versions of LR... I'll have to check on my other PC later (I have LR6 stand-alone installed on that). In any case, knowing how it's achieved allows the effect to be created in virtually any raw development software, as well as in Photoshop, GIMP, etc.

It's also worth bearing in mind that, as with any preset or manually-applied adjustment, what we've discussed in this thread is a starting point. Some photos will look better with further adjustments to the tone curve, contrast, saturation, colour HSL etc.

[Dartmoor Dave]

You can get similar effects with custom .dcp profiles at the raw conversion stage as well. Here's a snap from earlier this year with the Samsung GX-10 version of the K10D. The manufacturer's embedded profile is at the top, and my own custom profile that I usually use is underneath. In both versions I've set the white and black points to the top and bottom of the histogram, with no further editing. The custom profile was made from a colorcheck card using Adobe Profile Editor, with a linear tone curve applied. I usually put some more contrast back in during editing, but in this case it's the vanilla profile effect.

[Kozlok]

I don't remember that preset being available in earlier versions of LR... I'll have to check on my other PC later (I have LR6 stand-alone installed on that). In any case, knowing how it's achieved allows the effect to be created in virtually any raw development software, as well as in Photoshop, GIMP, etc.

It's also worth bearing in mind that, as with any preset or manually-applied adjustment, what we've discussed in this thread is a starting point. Some photos will look better with further adjustments to the tone curve, contrast, saturation, colour HSL etc.

I concur. I wouldn’t just click that and be done with it. Just here for this discussion.

This whole thing has opened my eyes though. I’ve never messed with the tone curve before because I never took the time to understand those controls. I’ve had this unspoken dissatisfaction with my processing, and I think I’m closer to unlocking my own style.