Holga Modifications, Hacks Tutorials and Information

Faking the Lomo Effect

May 11th, 2008 Posted in Tutorials

I wrote a tutorial a while ago on how to edit your photographs to make them look like they were taken with a Holga. This is a tutorial on how to make your Images look like they were taken with a Lomo camera. I assume its going for the LC-A look.

I found this guide on Flickr, and decided to try it out myself. You will need to use Photoshop.

1.File: Open: the picture you want
2.Image: Adjustments: Brightness/Contrast: increase contrast by 20
3.Image: Adjustments: Hue/Saturation: increase saturation by 20
4.Choose the Rectangular Marquee Tool (your basic selection tool)
5.Change feather amount to 1/12 the width of your picture (if your picture is 600px wide then you will set your feather to 50px)
6.Select your entire picture note: using select: all, will not work
7.Select: Inverse
8.Layer: New: Layer
9.Change your primary color to black. Fill the selection (on the new, blank layer).
10.Change the blend mode of this layer to Overlay
11.Layer: Duplicate Layer
12.Now select your base layer (the one with the picture on it).
13.Layer: New: Layer
14.Change your fill tool to Gradient
15.Change your Gradient Type to Spherical
16.Change your Gradient Shading Style to “foreground to transparent” (I believe this is the default).
17.Change your primary color to white.
18.With the fill tool selected, click in the middle of the picture, and drag the line out to the farthest edge of your picture (if it’s a portrait, use top or bottom, if landscape, use left or right).
19.Change the blend mode of this layer to Overlay
20.Change the Opacity of this layer to 80% (or whatever you see fit)

here is the effect that I got:

Example #1

Lomo effect, photoshop

Lomo effect, photoshop

Example #2

Lomo effect, photoshop

Lomo effect, photoshop

I think it works pretty well, give it a go! :)

All credit to Hugo! for writing this.

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  1. 4 Responses so far

  2. By Karl on May 25, 2008

    Nice. You can also ‘Holganize’ pics here online free:
    http://www.holganizer.net/index.php

    They also have a Photoshop script you can buy that automates the process.

  3. By Durkin on May 25, 2008

    thanks for the comment and the useful links! They are more simple to use but I do like the fact that you have much more control in photoshop :)

  4. By sinook on Jul 2, 2008

    great link, thanx !

  5. By Durkin on Jul 2, 2008

    no problem! Thanks for leaving a comment!

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