Make Your Photo Look Like a Hollywood Movie

Posted by kasrak Created May 20, 2007 Category Special Effects Views 241,418 Favourites 11

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Learn how to make your photographs look like they came straight out of Hollywood by following a couple of simple steps!

Note: This tutorial has been adapted for the GIMP from this Photoshop tutorial.

Alright, here's the picture:

Step 1: Lower the Saturation

Layer > Colors > Hue-Saturation. Set "Saturation" to about -55:

Step 2: Adjust the Curves

Layer > Colors > Curves. Play with the curves until you have something like this:

Step 3: Depth of Field

Duplicate the main layer. Apply a Gaussian Blur (Filters > Blur > Gaussian Blur) of about 5 to the layer copy.

Now right click on the layer copy and select "Add Layer Mask". The defaults are fine; click OK.

Set your foreground color to black. Select the paintbrush tool (Shortcut: P) and choose a large brush (around 350px) with 0 hardness (make one if you have to). Make sure the layer mask you just created is selected. Choose a focus point and click on it to reveal the sharp layer below. You should have something like this now:

Step 4: Vignette

Create a new layer above all your other layers and fill with black. Set it at 70% opacity:

Select the eraser tool (Shift+E) with the big soft brush you were just using. Erase the middle of your black layer, leaving the sides in place to create a vignette effect:

Step 5: Add Noise

Flatten your image: Image > Flatten Image.

Then go to Filters > Noise > Scatter RGB. I used the following settings:

Step 6: Aspect Ratio

If you want to give it the final touch, add two black rectangles at the top and bottom using the Rectangular Select (R) and Fill (Shift+B) tools:

You can go further and chance the "mood" of the shot by going to Layers > Colors > Color Balance. This one was made by dragging the slider toward cyan for Shadows, Midtones and Highlights:

Have fun!