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I’m such a sucker for trendy looks and post processing techniques. I’ve come across quite a few talented photographers on Flickr that have a certain look to their images- mostly portraits, and mostly outdoors- and it can be somewhat dramatic (like a lomo or cross-processed look) or quite subtle (kind of a desaturated look with boosted contrast). I tried to play around in Lightroom to get these effects and was pretty unsuccessful at first. The one I liked the most was the more subtle look. It was like the tonal range and contrast were slightly boosted in these portraits, but the colours were muted as if they had been bleached out a bit. Maybe it was only certain colours that were desaturated. I don’t know for sure. I just couldn’t get it right- but it looked so darned simple!

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These “portraits’ are usually also shot with a thin depth of field, throwing the background softly out of focus. It’s a real nice look. If I find an example that I can post here, without breaching any terms of use, I will. (Update- see this post) I’m still playing with that more subtle desat look. I’m thinking it’s a combination of appropriate lighting at capture with some very simple colour and contrast adjustments in post. 

Anyhow, I was reasonably successful in accomplishing the slightly more dramatic look that I compare to a lomo effect (but without the grain). I created a Lightroom preset called PixelPapa’s Lomo Look.  I’ve provided an sample image at the beginning of this post that you can click and view. I included in this example a third version of the image using a lomo preset from Lightroom/Photoshop guru Matt Kloskowski, just for comparison. His is too green for my taste. Give mine a try, if you like. Images shot outdoors with flat lighting work best. Or for fun, try shooting a brightly backlit subject and see what some crazy blown out flare looks like. This also seems to be trendy lately.

You can try clicking on the link below to download the preset package, or if it doesn’t work try right-clicking the link and choose save target as…

PixelPapa’s Lomo Look Lightroom Preset