A vintage or film look for a photo in one click
Quick Looks in Paint by Zaweba has 28 one-click looks, including Faded film, Polaroid-style, Cross-process and Teal & orange, with an intensity slider.
Quick Looks is the panel for this. Paint by Zaweba has 28 one-click looks with live thumbnails, including Faded film, Polaroid-style, Cross-process, Teal & orange, Old photo and Cyanotype. Hover to preview one on your photo, click to apply it and set the strength with the intensity slider. Each can be kept editable, so the look is never baked in.
A one-click look is a fast start, not a dead end. Pick the nearest look, turn it down to taste and you have a consistent style in seconds. For a set of photos that should feel alike, that consistency is half the point.
Finding the panel
Open Quick Looks from View > Panels > Quick Looks or Image > Quick Looks. The looks are grouped into four sets. Classic has Sepia, Black & White, High-contrast, Soft and Infrared B&W. Colour has Warm, Cool, Vivid, Muted, Faded film, Cross-process, Teal & orange and Bleach bypass. Vintage has Old photo, Polaroid-style, Cyanotype, Selenium and Split tone. Effects has Vignette, Soft glow, Sketch, Oil paint, Posterised, Duotone, Solarised, Poster edges, Film grain and Light leak.
Step by step
Open the photo and the panel. Move the pointer over the thumbnails and watch the canvas. Each look previews on your actual picture, which is far more useful than a thumbnail of a sample photo.
Click the one you like. Then use the intensity slider. Most looks are best somewhere between half and three quarters strength, where they shape the picture without shouting.
Choose where it applies: this layer, the whole image, or a selection. Applying to a selection is handy for a look on the background only, or a different look on the subject. Ticking the option to keep it editable means you can change your mind later.
Which look for which photo
Faded film suits soft daylight scenes and lifestyle photos. Polaroid-style gives snapshots a warm instant camera feel. Cross-process makes bold, unusual colours, good for city and fashion shots. Teal & orange is the cinematic standby, warming skin and cooling shadows, and suits people against skies or water. Old photo and Selenium turn portraits into heirloom style prints. Bleach bypass gives a gritty, low saturation feel to street photos.
Stacking looks
Looks combine well when used gently. Faded film at half strength with a little Film grain and a light Vignette gives a convincing analogue feel. Try one look for colour and one from Effects for texture, rather than two colour looks that fight each other.
Making a look your own
When you've tuned something you like, save it. Save current as look stores the active adjustment layer, the adjustment layers in the active group, or the last filter applied, as a new look in the panel. Looks can be renamed, deleted, imported and exported, so you can share a house style with a colleague or move it to another PC.
Getting a good result
Start with a well exposed, colour balanced photo. A look multiplies whatever is there, faults included. Check skin tones after applying any colour look, since that's where heavy styles go wrong first. And for a set of pictures, apply the same look at the same strength to all of them, so they sit together in an album or on a feed.
Quick Looks keep Paint by Zaweba quick for everyday photos while leaving every adjustment open for when you want to go further.
