Yesterday I was bemoaning the fact that Polachrome film was no longer available and promised that today I would post a howto on achieving a look alike effect with Photoshop. Well, as promised, here it is.

Actually this is not so much a howto more an example of the look and a free downloadable Photoshop action to do the grunt work of achieving that look. Here is an example of the effect as applied in Photoshop.

To see an example of the real thing click here.

You can also see further examples on the cover of U2’s Achtung Baby album.

Some experimentation may be necessary in preparing your image before applying the action. Note that there will be a considerable color shift and an increase in contrast. Also note that included in the action set is an action for applying a heavy grain effect which is the final step in the effect. You will see that this action is not just a simple application of digital noise but is a quite involved series of steps to separate out the 1/4 tones and apply differing amounts of noise to each step. I think you will agree that the grain effect is satisfactorily crunchy and very successful in mimicing real film grain. You could also deconstruct the action and experiment with differing levels of noise to achieve a greater or lesser grain effect. Anyway, have fun with it.

Just one final note - I use Photoshop CS, I believe that the action should work with CS2 but I can’t be sure. The same goes for the fact that I use a Mac and I think it should work on a PC but again I’m not a 100% sure. I wish I could take credit for this action but I can’t - a friend showed it to me and I’m not sure where he got it (this was a while ago) but I assume that, as most Photoshop actions are, it was freely available.

Polachrome Photoshop Action