110 format film? Back in the day we had these smaller cameras that took a film cartridge dubbed “110 speed” or “110 format” and it took these really grainy pictures that we’re kinda heavy on the orange/yellow/green tones and didn’t produce very rich color or clarity results. I’m not sure what it is, maybe nostalgia, but I’ve had the urge to re-create that effect with Photoshop.

So far the only resource I’ve found that has me anywhere near achieving this result was an article by Jeremy Daalder, a professional photographer. He has some good tutorials there, but didn’t quite hit that retro-ish 110 format look. Enter my tutorial.

Exhibit A: Boring digital photo (taken by WCCO at one of my shows)…

This is the effect we’re going for:

How do we achieve it? Simple.

First take your photo and make two layer copies of it so that you’ve got three layers in all. For clarity’s sake we’ll be referring to the photos in order of base to top (layer 1 through 3, 1 being the original photo).

We’re going to slap on an curves adjustment layer on layer 2 to bring out the low end:

On layer 3 we’re adding its own curves adjustment layer, but we’re also going to be editing the Red and Blue curves as well:

Next, on layer 3, modify the blending mode from “Normal” to “Color” (this is found on the layers dock)—make sure you’ve got LAYER 3 SELECTED and not the adjustment layer.

After you’ve made that adjustment, go back to layer 2 and add some Uniform Noise Distribution [Filter > Noise > Add Noise] to the tune of 10% (or to taste) to give it some gritty texture. Not too much, but enough. Then after you’ve done that, adjust the opacity of level 2 to refine the gritty texture in the photo—enough so that it doesn’t look artificial; rather so it looks like a photo with relatively poor focal quality.

Lastly you’re going to have to play around with the COLOR curves in layer 3’s adjustment layer and perhaps add a Brightness/Contrast layer on top of all these layers to achieve the optimal effect. Every photo’s different and will require its own custom handling.

Ideally to get that 110 effect, you want the photo to look slightly grainy (which will also help it lose its focal quality), and it has to look slightly saturated, while leaning a bit heavy on the oranges, greens, and yellows and not so strong on the blues and reds.

I’ll try to remember to post a scan of a photo taken with older 110 film/processing for a better reference.

Remember to just have fun with it and experiment. You may even come up with better techniques to achieve the end result.

Thanks to Jeremey Daalder for the cool photo tips.

August 23, 2005, 3:44 pm

Filed under: Photoshop (Adobe)

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