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1940s Color Film

Mar 24, 2011 | Uncategorized | 9 comments

1940s Color Film

It started with this photo.

[Portrait of Jimmy Crawford, New York, N.Y., between 1946 and 1948] (LOC)
I know I’ve mentioned several times that I’m working on a vintage film action for photoshop but I don’t think I ever shared why I’ve been so engrossed in it. I blame the Library of Congress! If you are not already a contact of the Library of Congress archives on flickr, I highly recommend you become one. Every Friday they release around 50 public domain photos from the archives. They are fascinating. But this one I just fell in love with — the color, the focus, just something about it really drew me in. So I set about trying to imitate it.

Now we all know that there are a thousand and one vintage recipes out there — mostly they involve upping the blue and magenta in the file. I’ve borrowed heavily from Veerle but altered her color curves and added a few tweaks to the highlights and mid-tones. So what does it look like? Well, you’ve seen some of them on my flickr stream. Here’s a couple of samples:
123/365: Red Haze

The First Born

83/365: Promises Unfulfilled

But I think you really need a before/after shot to get the full flavor:

Vintage-ified shot is on the left and standard processed is on the right. Cheryl has offered to help me test this out — anyone else interested? Right now I’ve only got it working in Photoshop — I use a command {select > color range} that isn’t available in Elements so until I find a work around for that, I’m afraid it’s a Photoshop only action. I know. I’m sorry! I’m also not entirely happy with how it handles skin tones. My teenage sons thought it made people look like sick vampires. Yikes!

9 Comments

  1. Cheryl on March 24, 2011 at 8:39 pm

    Thanks for heads-up about the Library Congress on Flickr. I just added it as a contact. I’m looking forward to trying out the action.

  2. Anika @ Pasando on March 24, 2011 at 10:10 pm

    Thanks for that link! Exciting…

  3. Daniele on March 29, 2011 at 6:31 pm

    oh I love these. Are you using a lens baby?

    • Anonymous on March 29, 2011 at 6:44 pm

      Thanks! Yes, some are with my lensbaby – it’s such an awesome lens, isn’t it?

      —– Reply message —–

    • Daniele on March 29, 2011 at 6:54 pm

      I actually saw further down that it was, but it is so cool. I don’t have one, but I have always wanted! It looks hard to use. Which one is this? Muse, double glass perhaps? I am very interested in getting one!

    • Anonymous on March 29, 2011 at 7:13 pm

      They can be tricky – there is a learning curve involved, especially if you don’t shoot in manual mode often. But after a month I started to get the hang of it. I got a composer off of ebay and then went back and got the creative aperture kit do that I could do macros and teleohotos.

      —– Reply message —–

    • Daniele on March 31, 2011 at 3:10 am

      Thanks for the info. The composer looks great. Someday I will have to invest!

  4. Anika @ Pasando on April 1, 2011 at 12:38 am

    Commenting again…just wanted to let you know I checked that link out…my gosh!! What a wealth of history and so beautiful. Can’t thank you enough. I can lose myself looking at so many of those shots.

    • Anonymous on April 1, 2011 at 1:24 am

      Aren’t they incredible? I look forward to each Friday to see the new ones
      they release. I love the vintage photography — but I also love the history
      too. It’s pretty neat! : )