Create a fashionable cinematic photo effect in Photoshop

Today we’re gonna look at how to create a fashionable cinematic photo effect using Adobe Photoshop. Note that if you’re using some other photo-editing software such as elements or GIMP, the process is exactly the same.

Here is a preview of the before/after effect that we will be creating:

To start off, choose a photo you’d like to apply the effect we’re gonna learn today to in Photoshop.

Step 1: Duplicate background layer

Next, duplicate your background layer to preserve the original image. You can do so by dragging your background layer to the “Create new layer” icon on the lower right corner of your layers panel.

Step 2: Create a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer

Create a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer on top of your duplicated background layer, to create a flatter image and toned down colors. Lower the saturation setting till you get what you think looks like a good result for your image. For my image below, I dragged the saturation slider down to -91

Step 3: Create an exposure adjustment layer

Create an exposure adjustment layer. We do this to create a kind of a dramatic effect expanding the difference between the shadow and light areas of the photo.

The exposure adjustment layer has 3 sliders. First, the exposure slider as you would expect brings up or down the brightness of the overall image, affecting highlight areas way more than shadow areas.

The offset slider, does the exact opposite. It stretches the tonal range downward to darken the shadows without overly influencing the highlights.

The gamma correction slider works sort of in the same sense as the exposure slider, only mainly affecting mid-tone areas of an image. Moving it to the right increases the mid-tone brightness of the image, while sliding it to the left darkens the overall appearance of the image.

Drag the exposure slider to the right to open up the highlights, till you get a look that suits your photo. In my case, I rode the exposure slider up to +0.58

Some people like to achieve a brighter more contrasty look, but I usually don’t like to blow out my highlights even if it was for the sake of accomplishing a particular photo effect.

Now drag the offset slider down to darken the shadow areas of your photo. Choose a setting that looks good with your image. I only dragged my offset slider down to -0.0026. Again. I don’t like to lose much image details, but some people might disagree so do what suits you and your particular image best.

For the gamma correction slider, I rode mine up to 0.86. Ride yours up to what looks good on your image, to open up mid-tone details a little bit.

Step 4: Merge visible layers, apply lens blur, and create layer mask

This is an optional step, and depends on the depth of field of your image as well. In cinematic footage, we sometimes see that the center of focus is sharp while other areas of the scene are kinda blurred out. To achieve this effect, you need to stamp all layers onto one layer on top and add a lens blur filter to it.

To merge all visible layers select the top layer, which is the exposure adjustment layer we’ve just created. Holding down the “alt” key, click the layers group panel arrow and choose the “merge visible layers” option. You could alternatively hit SHIFT+CTRL+E, which I think translates to SHIFT+COMMAND+E on a MAC (I’m a PC user unfortunately!).

Once you’ve merged all your previous layers into one layer, you can now apply the blur effect to that one. For that, go to Filter >> Blur >> Lens Blur. You will get a dialog box similar to the one below. Set the Iris >> Shape to Hexagon (6), drag the Radius slider to a value that yields the amount of blurring you want to apply to your photo (I went with a value of 37).

Under Specular Highlights I kept the Brightness value at 0 (again I don’t like blown out highlights), and the threshold at 70. Again, I urge you to experiment till you get the results that go best with your photo.

Leave the noise amount at 0, and the distribution at Uniform, and hit OK.

What you’ll get now is a blurry version of your stamped layer. We need to prevent the blur effect from affecting the center point of interest in our image, so we will create a layer mask to mask out the blur filter effect on that. To do so, hit the “Add Vector Mask” icon on the lower left corner of your layers panel. This will create a vector mask on your current blurry layer. Make sure you have black set as your foreground color, select a soft round brush and set the hardness to around 50%. Select the layer mask, and make a few brush strokes on your focal point in the image to restore the sharpness in there.

I usually don’t like abrupt transitions in my photos, so if you’re like me follow this step to create a gradual, smooth transition between your sharp and blurred areas in the photo. Hold down your Alt key, and click on the layer mask so that you get a view of your layer mask alone. Next go to Filter >> Blur >> Gaussian Blur and drag the slider to create a gradual black to white fading effect. I usually drag my blur slider all the way up to 250 for the softest possible transition of effect.

Step 5: Create a solid black layer

Now we want to add some kind of subtle vignetting to the corners along with the blurred out areas of our photo. To do that, create a new layer and fill it with black. Lower the opacity of the layer till you get a vignetting effect you’re comfortable with. I set the opacity of mine at 45%

Now we don’t want the vignetting effect to affect our entire image including our focal point, so we need to create a layer mask to our solid black layer, same way we did above. This time you don’t need to brush with black over your mask and then blur out the transition. Since we’ve already created an appropriate mask for our particular image, just go to the previous mask view by holding the Alt key and clicking on the old layer mask. Now that you’re in the mask view mode, hit CTRL+A to select all. Hold the alt key and click the new layer mask to go to the top layer mask view. The mask should be all white. Now hit CTRL+V to paste the previous mask onto the new mask. Hold the Alt key and click on the layer mask to exit the mask view mode. Now you will be able to see that the new layer mask has blocked out the dark vignetting effect off the masked areas of your photo.

Now you have your cinematic photo effect. If you wanna go a little further and alter the tone of your image, then proceed to step 6 below.

Step 6: Tone your final image

If you wish to tone your final image, you can do so by creating a Color Balance adjustment layer on top of all other layers. For my toning effect, I chose to go with a dark greenish color but of course feel free to experiment with different shading to create various interesting results.

For my greenish look, I gave all highlights, mid-tones, and shadows the same color settings as follows:

Cyan / Red to -1
Magenta / Green to +9
Yellow / Blue to +3

There is no hard-and-fast rule for this. Different combinations yield different results. I just fooled around with the sliders till I got this result, and in my opinion it looked good so I went with it.

Finally I lowered the opacity of my color balance layer down to 71% for a subtle effect

Hurray! We’re done! Now you have your very own cinematic like photo. Here are 3 of my photos that I applied this effect to, followed by a collection of images with a cinematic feel I found on flickr. Hope you like them, and I would like to see the results you got so feel free to share links to those in the comments below.

Photo by obeck

Photo by Severin Sadjina

Photo by Jose Maria Cuellar

Photo by i k o

Photo by Ricky Phoolka

Photo by Ricky Phoolka

Photo by Ricky Phoolka

Photo by Ricky Phoolka

Photo by P!XELTREE (Roger)

Photo by Prescott Watson

Photo by skoupidiaris (Pavlos)

Photo by brunauto (Bruno)

Photo by Awang Muhamad Nasuha

Photo by Nishanth Jois

Photo by Awang Muhamad Nasuha

Photo by Diego Albero Román

Photo by Diego Albero Román

Photo by Diego Albero Román