Color Grading
Why Your Digital Photos Look Too Clean (And How Film Emulation Fixes It)
I have a preset I built two years ago called “Rumors.” Named after the Fleetwood Mac album, which was playing on my turntable when I made it. It’s a Kodak Portra 400 emulation, slightly warm, with lifted shadows and a subtle green shift in the midtones. It took me about four hours to dial in. It’s also one of the most-downloaded presets I’ve ever released, and most of the people who downloaded it couldn’t explain why they liked it, only that it made their photos feel more “real.