Give Your Digital Photos the Lomo Look

Back in the 1980s, the Russian optics manufacturer Lomo PLC produced its first 35mm camera, the Lomo LC-A. It was loosely based on the Cosina CX-1 model and remained on the periphery of photography until 1991, when a group of Austrian photographers ‘discovered’ the camera in Prague and, according to a posting in Wikipedia, were ‘charmed by the unique, colourful, and sometimes blurry images that the camera produced’.
After a series of exhibitions and some aggressive marketing, Lomography was born ““ and remains alive in the ‘artistic’ side of photography today. The main focus of Lomography is on snapshots. The camera’s small size and simple controls enable even novice users to carry the camera with them and use it anywhere and at any time.
Artistic photographers became inspired to exploit the characteristics of the camera in their picture taking and ignore the normal rules that apply to regular photography. A trend was quickly born and exhibitions of vignetted, contrasty Lomography pictures – many of them unsharp and taken from odd angles – began appearing at prestigious locations such as Photokina.

With the growing popularity of the Lomo LC-A, other manufacturers began to enter the field, the most successful being Holga, which produces a range of models with similar characteristics to the Lomo original but uses 120 film. Fortunately, you don’t need to fork out almost $500 for a Lomo LC-A kit or around $100 for a Holga camera. It’s possible to simulate the Lomo effect in software ““ as long as you have appropriate digital images.

Select your images

Step 1
Look for snapshots taken with a lens focal length between 35mm and 70mm (wider or narrower angles of view won’t have the same apparent perspective as a Lomo shot). If the picture was taken with a 4:3 aspect ratio, crop it to a 3:2 aspect ratio to simulate 35mm film.

Step 1

Create a Vignette

Step 2
Open the image in your favourite image editor and create a new ’empty’ layer on top of it.

Step 2
Step 3
Fill the new layer with white, using the ‘paint bucket’ tool.
Now set the blend mode to Multiply and select Filter>Distort>Lens Correction.

Step 3

Step 3
Step 4
Set the colour of the vignette mask to black by clicking on the colour patch and setting either the HSB or RGB values to 0.

Step 4
Step 5
Adjust the Amount and Midpoint sliders to obtain the degree of darkening you want. (We set the Amount to -100 and the Midpoint to +85 for this picture.) Press OK to apply the vignette to your picture and flatten the image (Layer>Flatten Image).

Step 5
Adjust Contrast and Saturation
Step 6
Now create a new adjustment layer by selecting Layer>New Adjustment Layer>Curves.

Step 6
Step 7
Anchor the mid-point on the Curves graph, then drag the left side down and the right side up to produce an S shape, boosting the contrast and saturation in your picture.

Step 7

Sharpening
Step 8
Flatten the image again then swap to Lab colour mode by selecting Image>Mode>Lab colour.

Step 8
Step 9
Switch from the Layers to the Channels window and click on the ‘a’ and ‘b’ channels to deselect them. The image on your screen should now be in monochrome.

From the drop-down menu on the toolbar, select Filter>Sharpen>Unsharp Mask. Then adjust the settings to produce the result you want. Adjustments will vary with different types of photos.

Step 9
Step 10
At this point you may wish to try some selective brightness and contrast adjustments on the ‘a’ and ‘b’ channels. Simply select the channel you wish to adjust and click on Image>Adjustments>Brightness/Contrast and drag the sliders to produce the required changes. The end result may look slightly posterised, particularly if you have set the Radius too high when you sharpened the image.

Step 10
Step 11
Once you have obtained the effect you’re looking for, click on Image>Mode>RGB Color to convert it back to RGB for saving. This will restore the picture’s colours.

If you’d like to add a black border, select Image>Canvas Size and choose Black for the Canvas Extension Colour. Apply the border by increasing the Width and Height dimensions by between roughly 5%. Finally, save the adjusted file with a new file name.

Step 11
Step 12
The end result.

Step 12