I’ve noticed lately that there’s a trend for photography with a dreamy washed-out rainbow effect which kind of apes a light-leaked film. I’m not generally a fan of faking the natural blips and errors that occur in 35mm film; it often looks overdone and obvious, but I just tried out this effect for fun. The results are quite pleasing, if not a little cheesy:

Here’s how it’s done.

Open your photo and create a new layer above it.

Now make a really gaudy colored diagonal gradient in the new layer – 2 or 3 colours. I used neon green-yellow-pink for this one.

Set the blending mode of the layer to ‘soft light’ and adjust the opacity until it looks a bit more subtle. All done!

Try different colours for a kinda cross-processed effect. Here’s blue-orange-red.

And a more subtle one, pinks and purples.

P.S. These photos were taken in Devon on my work weekend away – more photos from the trip on Flickr.

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