Bad Effects from Film to Photoshop

Bad Effects from Film to Photoshop

Altering images and getting them looking seriously bad (you read that correctly) isn't just a recent phenomenon.

Photographers of a certain age will remember French photographer Jean Coquin.

Jean Coquin was responsible for the invention of the Cokin filter system. It was very popular and spawned the introduction of similar systems. The idea was to have one size of filter which fitted in a holder that in turn could be attached to an adaptor ring that screwed onto the lens. So if you had several lenses with different filter threads you only needed to buy one set of filters. A very good principle, in fact very popular and very handy.

Warming and cooling filters for colour correction or enhancement, for example the 81 series warming filters, were very useful and an essential part of a photographer's kit especially for those landscapes and portraits. Polarisers and graduated neutral density filters are still useful. So far so good.

But there were those filters that had limited appeal or use, such as graduated tobacco coloured filters to give an alien sky to landscapes. A graduated orange may on the face of it be OK to 'enhance' a weak sunset it would look unnatural. It'd be useful to deepen a blue sky on black and white film though. Then we move onto the multi-starbursts, diffraction filters and more. The starbursts and cross screen filters could make a complete mess of a decent scene. Small starbursts are formed naturally with a lens set to a small aperture in any case. Wacky once, then cliched. Not to be used again.




This image of St. Malo in northern France was taken in 1991 and that is a genuine tobacco filter (oh yes I admit to having one), not recreated in software. Adding an overall warm tone helps to make it more like a sunrise but not totally convincing. Fortunately a conversion to mono results in a much more pleasing image.








The use of the weird and wonderful effects was a 1980s trend (it was a time of excess in many ways) which faded during the 1990s. I must point out that there were other makers of outlandish filters though Cokin through their marketing and ease of use became synonymous.

Fads went and trends changed. Just as we thought we were safe along came Adobe (and others). While there were very useful image adjustment tools such as boosting contrast and warming up a cold image there were new image processing methods. These were accessed from a 'Filter' menu. The bread and butter colour correction tools were placed under an 'Adjustments' menu, much more logical (and boring perhaps). Those 'filters' though offered something exciting. You may think some of the weird effects below are cool. Today. Tomorrow you won't. I just chose some at random.




Rectangular to Polar




Mirror




Ripple


Now we have apps on phones adding to the mix. Surprise surprise, they have controls called 'filters'. There's something intoxicating about that word that is so appealing. For a minute or two anyway. In a few years those effects will be 'oh that's so 2020'.

Just because you can use an effect doesn't mean you have to. Like winding your windows down when you go through a car wash. You can...

All text and images © Keith Rowley 2020