How to Make Photos Look Like Film: Easy Tricks and Best Apps for You

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How to Make Photos Look Like Film: Easy Tricks and Best Apps for You

Last Updated: 2024. 04. 28

The nostalgic charm of film photography has grown increasingly popular over the last few years! More and more enthusiasts are finding their way back to shooting on film cameras! But they soon finds out, shooting film can be much more expensive that shooting digital!

Therefore, here, we’re going to show you how to make digital photos look like film, no matter what camera you use. Whether you’re a big fan of film look photo or someone struggle to exploring ways to replicate the distinct film colors of old film stocks and vintage cameras? You’ve come to the right place! Read on to find the best best solutions.

Bonus: Make Edits on Photos & Turn Them into Film-like Slideshow with FlexClip

Before we drive in, we'd like to share an powerful online photo and video editor called FlexClip for you to edit your photo to look like film and also help you to make more edits to turn your photos into a stunning photo slideshow!

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FlexClip Powerful Editor

FlexClip offers easy color adjustments for you to quickly adjust exposure, contrast, brightness, temperature and more to mimic a film photo look. Preset filters and effects, such as retro filters, vintage filters, light leaks effects, film grain effects, etc. are also available to turn your photo into a new look! Moreover, it is a all-in-one video editor comes with professional video templates, powerful editing features, rich stock resources, and stunning effects to turn your raw clips and normal photos into a masterpiece! Just have a try now!

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Part 1 Easy Tricks to Make Photos Look Like Film

When you're trying to edit a photo to look like film, your aim will be to mimic the characteristics of vintage cameras. Below are some easy tricks for you to reference.

Manually Adjust for a Film-Look Photo

The direct way to edit your photos to like film is by making basic color adjustments - adjust the brightness, saturation, temperature, contrast, change the highlights and shadows, add vignette, etc. Just check the tricks below for editing your photos to like film with color adjustments.

Adjust color temperature - you may notice that a classic film photo always comes with warmer colors. Try to increase the temperature to give your photo the warmer yellow-orange color of some film stocks.

Adjusting the saturation - another characteristic of the film picture is low saturation, you can tweak the video saturation to make your video look like a film photo.

Adjust highlight and shadow - a film-like photo always has a large contrast between brightness and darkness, so you can give your photos more highlights and shadows to create a big contrast so that to mimic the felling of film photo.

Add vignette - you can also use heavy vignettes to increase the film look further by creating a darker corner that reminds one of a classic film. It also helps draw focus to the image's subject.

In FlexClip's Adjust tab, you will find the settings for exposure, contrast, brightness, temperature, saturation, highlights, shadows, and vignette, among others. Just playing with those settings to make your photos look like film.

FlexClip's Easy Color Adjust

Use Preset Filters for a Film-like Photo

Adding a present filter is one of the easy and effortless methods to edit photos to look like film.

Some editors will have preset filters, which mimic the effect of the cinema film with retro grain and noise, making your photos look like film. You can quickly apply one to your photos and make them look like film without adjusting everything yourself.

FlexClip also offers some preset filters to make your pictures look like film with a simple click. Multiple filters have covered all you need for a film look photo, including Greyscale filter, B&W filter, vintage filter, retro filter, and more filters suited for creating film quality photos with ease.

FlexClip's Preset Filter'

Besides, many social apps like Instagram and other mobile apps feature these filters to make photos look like film with a simple click. You can check them out in Part 2.

Add Film Grain Overlay to Your Photo

Never overlook the grain when you editing a digital photo to make it look like film! A digital photo always looks sharper and cleaner, but a film photo looks more blurred and undefined, with a lot of noise and grain.

It's pretty easy to add noise and film grain to your photo. Twink with the built-in settings, use a preset film grain overlay directly, or you can even layer a texture image and blend it with your photo to add noise. However, adding film grain to a photo always affect the image quality somehow, so add it properly to get a perfect film look photo.

You can also try FlexClip to easily create film grain effects for your photo using its stunning preset effects, rich stock resources, and flexible editing tools, with no downloads and experience needed.

FlexClip's Stunning Effects

Part 2 Best Apps You Can Try to Edit Photos to Look Like Film

Now, we’ll introduce some great mobile apps to help you make photos look like film without transferring them to your computer for editing. So you can directly edit your photos to look like film on your iPhone or Android device.

Instagram

Well, we’ve already mentioned above, Instagram offers great features to help you make your photos look like film. Primarily as a social media platform, Instagram has its own toolbox of features for editing your snaps before you posting them. You can use its built-in photo editor to edit your photo into a film look with its various retro film features. The only the drawback is that the filters must be used with photos taken live within the Instagram app instead of those exiting photos in your camera roll.

Film Photo Editing App - Instagram

VSCO

VSCO is one of the best apps to help you digital photos look like film. You can also easily adjust your photo with different settings, such as contrast, exposure, saturation, grain, fade, and more tools to make it look like film. Moreover, it also allows you to makes your picture look like film with filters - you can use VSCO for free with limited editing tools and presets or upgrade to a higher plan to access over 200 premium presets and filters as well as more editing features such as HSL, film grain to level up your film look photo.

Film Photo Editing App - VSCO

Huji Cam

Huji Cam, available for Android and iOS, can help you take photos from your phone and make them look like a retro film photo that taken from a '90s film camera. Preset film filters are available when you launch the app, you can take film like photos with one tap. It is ideal for those who looking for a camera app specializing in disposable camera photography! Besides taking a film look photo directly, you can also retouch and edit those photos if needed.

Film Photo Editing App - Huji Cam

Dazz Cam

Another app you can try to make your photos into film look is Dazz Cam. It is inspired by the retro film camera of the 80s. Based on the film proofs, it can 100% restore the color, texture and noise of the film. Moreover, featuring AI-generated effects, film effects, film grain and dust, light leaks, and more filters, Dazz Cam can help you mimic film photo look and turn your photo into a aesthetic one with great ease.

Film Photo Editing App - Dazz Cam

FAQs about Film Photos

Q1: Does film photo really look better than digital photo?

There are certainly pros and cons for film and digital. Which one is better is simply depends on the your style as a photographer and what you’re going after in terms of your art. Film has a lot of visual qualities that digital photography struggles to replicate, while digital has a certain cleanliness to it that film could never achieve.

Q2: How to make iPhone photos look like film?

Apple has launched a new feature in its built-in camera - Photographic Styles - that allows you to add preset styles from Rich Contrast, Vibrant, Warm, or Cool you like to shoot photos, and then customize further by adjusting the tone and warmth values to mimic the film like as possible.

Q3: How to make videos look like film?

To make a video look like film, you can pick a powerful video editor, like FlexClip, and then follow the workflow to mimic the effect of film photos in your videos, adjust color settings, add filters, use overlay effects, etc.

Sandy /

Has 4-year of professional photographing experience. Very much into recording every detail of life. She is passionate about all things related to video production, and loves to exploring tips and tricks about it.