In my earlier post How To Get The Polachrome Look Using Photoshop I made available a Photoshop action to achieve the effect. In the post I wrote that some experimentation was needed to prepare your images before applying the effect because of the color shifts and increase in contrast. Here I’m going to show a before and after example with a few extra tips to get you started.

Here is one of my latest shots using the effect.

Here is the original before applying the effect in Photoshop.

You will see that the contrast is kept low because I wanted a very low key effect and you will also notice that the color has shifted somewhat to a cold blue. With this shot it’s not so apparent how much the contrast shifts with this effect but that is because I edited the original so that all the information is roughly in the center of the histogram meaning that the contrast won’t expand to either end of the histogram and block the shadows or burn out the highlights. This is important - if you view the photo below, which is from the same session and edited to produce a broader and more correct contrast range, you will see that there are areas of highlight that are approaching white. With the Polachrome action applied these areas will burn out completely to white. Also when you apply the Heavy Grain action at the end of the process you will find that the areas of burnt out highlight will have had no grain applied to them and it looks distinctly odd. This is entirely in keeping with real film grain (you won’t see grain in burnt out highlights) but it is something to be aware of - as before experimentation will show you just how close to the highlight end of the histogram you can push your images without this happening.

Also with this effect you will find that large out of focus areas work very well especially with the heavy grain effect. Of course you can also ignore all the previous advice and figure out your own way of using the effect - you will probably find a whole different look for your images!

I kind of like a murky, low key look - your mileage may well vary, as they say.

Polachrome Photoshop Action