Achieve The Indie Movie Look

In this tutorial I will show you how to take an ordinary photo, and make it look like it's a still from a movie. Now this photo is great as is, but its not so cinematic. So lets make it cinematic!



The first thing is add a new layer and create to longer black strips across the bottom, and top. This will give the look of a wide-screen movie.



It's already starting to look like a movie still. Now, we just need to add that movie look. Before I go into the look I have chosen for this photo. Its nice to know some of the looks. Hollywood has a few looks. The most famous is a blue hue, but I like the indie looking' style with yellow hues.



First, we need to add more depth in the photo. Go to Image>Adjustments>Levels.. Than we need to add to move the slider down ever so slightly. This is basically how much dark or light you like. I just made it a little bit darker.



After we made it a little more depth, and darker shadows. Lets get the colour going. The easiest way to do this is go to Image>Adjustments>Color Balance..



This will open a new window, and you can play with sliders to get the look you like. Since, I am looking a yellow hue look, I made sure the yellow is the highest value.



Now, under the sliders you will see a radio button for Highlights. Select that one, and I made the red the highest value.



Now your done! Hopefully you've now learned something about changing the look and feel of images using the color balance adjustments :)