Lomo Photography Tutorial

The Russian made Lomo LC-A camera was manufactured a cheap alternative to the higher quality Japanese rivals. It was poorly made and the photographs it produced were just as bad, however as time passed popular culture brought the mis-coloured shots from the Lomo camera into a whole new light, which is now a very sought after effect.

Step 1: Creating a Vignette
The first thing you want to do is create the classic vignette that the Lomos are well known for and I achieve this by doing a freehand lasso of a circle around the photo. It doesn’t need to be perfect and to prevent hard edges, I set the feather to 80-90px before creating the circle.

Once you have set the feather and have drawn the circle, you must invert the selection. You can do this one of two ways. #1 Shift-Ctrl-I (Shift-Cmd-I on the Mac) or #2 Go to the menu Select / Inverse.

Now to achieve the vignette, I add a Levels layer. Note - I still have the invert selected. This will add a masked out layer on top of your original layer. I then adjust the levels by moving the center arrow to the right. This will darken the edges, giving me a vignette. The amount is up to you and in this case I went from 1.00 to 0.70 on the center number. Now you have a vignette.

Step 2: Making the photo look Lomo
Another key to a Lomo picture is the colour contrast and saturation. This occurs because people with real Lomos use colour slide film and cross-process the film in C41 chemicals.

At this point I usually flatten the image using Shift-Ctrl-E (Shift-Cmd-E on the Mac) or go to the menu and Layer / Merge Layers. First, I add a curves layer and create a slanted S.

Then I create a new layer on top of the other two layers. I select the colour black and fill the new layer with solid black. Then I change the blending mode and set it to Soft Light and reduce the opacity to 20%.

Step 3: Sharpening and Saving
This has gotten us very close to be finished. Again, I flatten the photo by using Shift-Ctrl-E (Shift-Cmd-E on the Mac) or go to the menu and Layer / Merge Layers.

Before saving the photo as a JPG, you need to sharpen the photo. I use the Unsharp Mask and Lab mode/lightness technique. The purpose of this step is that it adds more contrast and darkens some of the areas as well. Now you can use whatever sharpening technique you want, but the following method prevents the colour halos that come with certain sharpening techniques.

Go to Image / Mode / Lab Colour. If you hadn’t flattened the image yet, it will ask you if want to flatten, please do so.

Then select your channel window and click on the lightness channel. The 3 other channels should deselect.

Then go to the menu, select Filter / Sharpen / Unsharp Mask.
I like sharpness, so I set the Amount to 50%, Radius to 50% and the Threshold to 0. Click OK. This is completely up to you on the settings. Plus it will depend on the photo as well and use your best judgment/preference.

Go to Image / Mode / RGB Colour. You do not have to reselect the unchecked channels, when converting back to RGB, the channels will automatically turn back on and the photo will go back to be in colour.
Final step, save as a Jpeg.