Affinity Photo - Plugins or similar for period colour film look?

[Starbase1]

Hi,

Is anyone aware of Affinity plugins that will give a period film look? I'm hoping for something that will make my CGI work look less CGI.

For example, the old Polaroid instant photos had a distinctive colour balance that I struggle to reproduce. Similar for early colour photos from NASA, and I can see it being really useful to process a video image sequence for that period look.

Please feel free to suggest commercial solutions!

Thanks, Nick

[iconoclast]

Hi Starbase 1!

I'm not really sure if I understand what you are looking for, but if I do possibly LUTs could do the job. Affinity Photo has LUT functionality by design. There are already some LUTs in the repertoire. You can add more. You will find many on the Web (also take a look at the Ressources category here on the forums), even free ones. Or you can create your own ones.

As an alternative I could recommend the free G'MIC Plugin that has LUTs functions too, and it also has a filter called "Simulate Film", that has a huge variety of simulated photo films (additional ones can be downloaded and added for free), with a lot of adjustments to refine them. You will find the whole stuff in the category "Color" (or by using the "Search" field). By the way, G'MIC contains more than 500 additional filters in differebnt categories. Many of them are really cool.

[h_d]

If you can snag yourself a copy of the original free Google Nik Collection (download instructions here among other places)  Analog Efex Pro 2 should do all you desire. It has almost infinite combinations of retro settings. Works for me in Photo v2 running on macOS Ventura.  

[h_d]

I can't take screen grabs of the plugin interface for some reason, but here's a before and after of the default Wet Plate setting:

    

[Starbase1]

4 minutes ago, iconoclast said:

Hi Starbase 1!

I'm not really sure if I understand what you are looking for, but if I do possibly LUTs could do the job. Affinity Photo has LUT functionality by design. There are already some LUTs in the repertoire. You can add more. You will find many on the Web, even free ones. Or you can create your own ones.

As an alternative I could recommend the free G'MIC Plugin that has LUTs functions too, and it also has a filter called "Simulate Film", that has a huge variety of simulated photo films, with a lot of adjustments to refine them. You will find the whole stuff in the category "Color".

Here's an example I found - to my untrained eye this example seems to preserve whites while under-representing blue tones. I'm really not great at colour.

So I'm hoping to buy something that would let me apply a colour change to a "well balanced" modern image, and turn it into something like this. Ideally for several different specific film effects.

Nick

[h_d]

I did manage to get this screen grab from the Nik Analog Efex Pro 2 plugin:

 

LUT's will also work but they're less open to experimentation...

(Original image from Pixabay in the Stock Panel.)

[iconoclast]

OK, so I understood right. LUTs should be able to do that, but you need the right ones. LUTs (Lookup Tables) are files with predefined color informations. You can apply them with just one click to an image. A big advantage of LUTS is that you can easily apply the same color look to several images. If you can't find LUTs that fit your needs, you can create your own ones using the color filters in Affinity first and then save the result as LUT (Menu "File", "Export LUT"). Affinity Photo 1 unfortunately had a bug in the LUT function as I last tried it. I'm not sure if it is fixed yet. Even in version 2. As an alternative you can use the G'MIC Plugin. In that case load the source image and the color manipulated result as two layers in one document and use the filter "CLUT from After - Before Layers" to create a LUT. To apply LUTs to images, use the Live Filter "LUTs" or the Studio Panel "Adjustment". In the second case, you need to import the LUTs you want to use into the repertoire of this Filter. After that, they will stay there to be used whenever you need them.

Or try the "Simulate Film" filter in G'MIC. The NIC Collection might be a good choice to. I'm not experienced in it. But I heard a lot about it.

[loukash]

1 hour ago, h_d said:

Google Nik Collection (download instructions here among other places)

The download link posted there is long dead.
But you can still download the free v1.2.11 directly from the original Schroogle mothership:
Mac
Win

[RasterFarian]

Along the same lines as the starting question. How do I know which filters will work with Affinity Photo? For example I'd like a pack of artistic filters. I found this one:

https://www.photowhoa.com/deals/watercolor-photoshop-actions/

Does anyone know if this would work with AP1 or AP2? 

[Twolane]

Don't waste your money on Photowhoa. Download this old version of the Nik collection. It's free for the taking, and works with v1 and v2 of Photo.

https://www.techspot.com/downloads/6809-google-nik-collection.html

During install or sometime after, it will ask you to upgrade to a newer version. Don't. The upgrades aren't free.

[RasterFarian]

Ok, I'll check it out. Does it have "arty" filters?

[RasterFarian]

Also, that leaves the original question: how do I know which filters/plug-ins will work in AP? Or is it a case of: If it plug ins to PhotoShop then it should work in AP?

[Twolane]

Depends on your version of arty. Check out the new version of the Nik collection to see. The old version is very similar.

https://www.youtube.com/@NikCollectionByDxO

[RasterFarian]

Ok, sorry, I see what you mean. "Arty" is a vague term. I mean making something look like watercolor or oil or pastel/chalk/pencil. Photoshop has like a whole interface. It's mostly cheesy, but if used with a light hand and layering you can sometimes get something that works. 

[Twolane]

No, the Nik collection won't do that.

[RasterFarian]

Ok, Nik looks like something I'd like to try anyway so thanks for that. Do you know how to determine whether a filter/plug-in will work for AP before purchasing it?

[Twolane]

No idea, but someone will be along to answer that question, I'm sure.

As for the old version of Nik, it's free, and it works. I had it installed on v1. I now have it on v2 (Windows). If it's not what you want, you can remove it.

[v_kyr]

• Nik Analog Efex Pro
• Franzis Analog Projects Pro
• DxO FilmPack
• Exposure 7 (presets)
• ... and so on ...

[iconoclast]

G'MIC has several very good Artistic Filters. Even it was initially made as a standalone app and plugin for GIMP, since some time there is also a *.8bf-version of it that works with Photoshop, Affinity Photo and others. By the way, there is also a free web service with limited functionality. But I'm not sure if each of the filters will work with Photo. There may still be some bugs. I tested e.g. the "CLUT from After - Before Layers" filter yesterday evening, and it didn't seem to work - at least in Affinity Photo. In such cases I use GIMP with G'MIC. It is free too and G'MIC works very good there. But the most filters should also work in Photo. The "Simulate Film" Filter e.g. is one I like very much and used it very often during the last years. And, as I already said, G'MIC is free and open source. You'll find it here: https://gmic.eu/download.html But scroll down to the second download. The one for Photoshop, Photo, Paint Shop Pro...

One additional annotation: To download open source stuff, you should always choose the original websites of the certain projects, because there are some criminals out there that occupied even top level domains and try to spread malware this way. One example for such a bad site is e.g. audacity.de. If you want to know the right URL, you will normally find it in the Wikipedia. Most of them are *.org-URLs. E.G. gimp.org, inkscape.org, audacityteam.org...

And another additional hint: For "arty" things, if that means to turn photos into images that look like paintings or drawings, I can recommend PhotoSketcher. This is a freeware standalone app for Windows that applies very good Watercolor-, Oil-, even Ink- and other painting effects to photos. A small and very cool app. It also exists as a portable version that can be installed on an USB-stick.

[Twolane]

I second G'mic. I use that plugin, too.

[iconoclast]

One thing I forgot to say: In G'MIC, in the category "Color", there is also a filter called "Color Presets". This filter offers a huge amount of LUTs to apply them to images, and adjustments to refine them. The only disadvantage in opposite to Affinity Photos own LUT-function is that this one is not non-destructive, as every filter in plugins.

[PedroOfOz]

On 1/9/2023 at 6:25 AM, Starbase1 said:

Here's an example I found - to my untrained eye this example seems to preserve whites while under-representing blue tones. I'm really not great at colour.

So I'm hoping to buy something that would let me apply a colour change to a "well balanced" modern image, and turn it into something like this. Ideally for several different specific film effects.

@Starbase1 You're no doubt aware colour prints contain layers of cyan, magenta, yellow and the key (black). Over time one or more of those layers can fade (due to various reasons). Usually the cyan layer fades first and takes some of the black with it followed by the yellow layer. So therein is the key to your solution ...

In AP open a curves adjusment. Change RGB to CMYK then open 'Master' and start with cyan - pull down to decrease, push up to increase (you'll of course want to decrease). Follow with black then yellow if required. With a bit (or a lot!) of playing around you'll get what you're after as per your examples.

Cheers.

[lphilpot]

On 1/8/2023 at 2:36 PM, iconoclast said:

Or try the "Simulate Film" filter in G'MIC.

I am neither a LUT nor G'MIC expert (old film look isn't my cup of tea) but I was just able to apply a Kodachrome 25 LUT to a test image using the G'MIC Colors | Apply External CLUT filter called from Photo 2. Maybe this will help.

G'MIC downloads - https://gmic.eu/download.html

RawTherapee Film Simulation Collection - http://rawtherapee.com/shared/HaldCLUT.zip (402 MB)

You don't have to use the entire CLUT collection. Download the zip but extract only the PNGs for the film types you want. That's what I did for use with ART and/or RawTherapee:

[iconoclast]

@lphilpot Yes, that might be a good option too. Many ways lead to Rome, even in this case. But you basically don't need G'MIC to apply LUTs to images in AfPhoto. You can do this using the LUT-filter or the Adjustment Panel. The advantage of the G'MIC-filter "Color Presets" is that there is already stored a huge amount of very good LUTs in it. So you don't need to search for it on the Web. The only disadvantage is, that G'MIC-filters are not non-destructive.

[R C-R]

3 hours ago, iconoclast said:

The only disadvantage is, that G'MIC-filters are not non-destructive.

But can G'MIC & its presets be used with Macs?