How to Achieve the Effect from the Movie “300″
In this tutorial I’ll try to explain how to adjust your images to give them a tone similar to the one that was used in the postproduction of the movie 300. A LOT has been written and published on the internet about different procedures for achieving this, but after trying many of them myself on different images, I found that the procedure that I’m about to describe works best on a variety of different images.
So, let’s begin. The image that I’ll be using for this tutorial looks like this:
Of course, it’s always a good idea to use a history scene or a close up of a soldier so that your image looks authentic. Moreover, I think you’ll agree that having a considerable amount of clouds is also a good idea, since there is a lot of ominous-looking sky throughout the film itself.
The first thing that you will need to do is apply the Photo Filter adjustment layer (Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Photo Filter) and pick Sepia from the menu. Move the slider all the way to the right and set the value of 100. Make sure you have checked the Preserve Luminosity checkbox. Then you’ll need to add the Hue/Saturation adjustment layer. For the time being, just decrease the master saturation to a value in the range of -10 to -40. Depending on your photo, you can experiment with the values and decide what works best on your photo. Having done this, add a Curves adjustment layer and give a little contrast to your photo, since the film itself has a lot of contrast.
Next, duplicate the background layer and make it black and white by going to Image > Adjustments > Black & White. It’s important that this duplicate B&W layer stays under the adjustment layers. Now, set the blending mode of the B&W layer to Overlay and you’re almost there! If there is too much contrast, you can decrease the opacity of the B&W layer or simply adjust the contrast curve in the Curves adjustment layer.
You can now additionally adjust the colors of your photo in the Hue/Saturation adjustment layer. You’ll probably only need to desaturate the master level a bit more or mingle with the saturation slider in the Yellows channel.
Lastly, since this is a film-inspired photo adjustment, you may add some film grain to the photo. Select the background layer and go to Filter > Artistic > Film Grain. Set the values to Grain: 5, Highlight Area: 3 and Intensity: 2. And an optional radius of 2.5px or 3px of Gaussian Blur (Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur) can be applied to the background layer.
Finally, I must say that the values of the options described here should not be definite. All photos differ significantly and the best results are achieved if there has been some experimenting with the options.
A tutorial by Bonifacio Cruz
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