VSCOCAM "THE ALCHEMY COLLECTION" REVIEW

Hello everyone! How are you guys doing?

I love writing posts like this and trust me when I write this kind of entry, it takes me way shorter, less thinking required and I can be a little more expressive! I am not sure why but most of the times writing the restaurant review posts could be pretty tiring and needed extra effort, especially when I am NOT in the mood.

First and upmost, no I am not getting paid by VSCO to blog about this, it’s just that I think it’s nice to add in something different to refresh this blog, shortly, I am just bored of the restaurant reviews post, and I wouldn’t tolerate negative comments as this post is very personal, it’s how I see it with my personal point of view so it’s my way.

So VSCO just released their newest filter set named “The Alchemy Collection” and since I am an avid VSCO user, I obviously downloaded the set for $2.99 hoping it could add in something more unique and in a way, the more high fashion crushed colors and cross-processed that I just love love LOVE.

VSCO is just so good at using the right pictures on their advertorials, but hey, everyone does that and that’s actually the idea: TO PUT THE FILTERS ON THE PHOTOS THAT SUITED THE FILTERS BEST TO GET THE BETTER PUSH & RESULT. I think most of you know that my feed focuses heavily on food and food pictures can be pretty tricky considering the appearance and the surrounding. That’s why I released this post to have fun with your food pictures and not to stuck with the plain and *ahem* boring stereotypes of how food pictures should be. It’s your account, your way. Let the birds chirp until they tired (eh do birds get tired?)

I don’t know how to say it in the most proper way but I found that for me, VSCO’s Alchemy collection is a little rich, quirky with a touch of vintage but also industrial. Okay it's getting complicated now, but one thing I am sure enough: not the best for food pictures, unfortunately.

I could easily spent hours having fun trying on filters on various photos and after trying this and that, I found that the Alchemy collection fits perfectly on outdoor shootings, especially street photography and nature. I’ve compared the filters on DSLR camera and iPhone camera pictures and as I’ve mentioned before, VSCO is indeed made for iPhone cameras and the result seemed to more beautifully set on iPhone pictures.

Enough yakking, let’s do the little overview.

PS: I set the filters to maximum (12) without further editing (except grains) to give you the real look of the combination, and no it's not perfect, but it's "real".

Q1

For me, Q1 is one of the “safe” filters here. It tends to give you this warm vintage look and it enhances the warm colors in your photo like “yellow”, desaturated and "film" the blue & green. It’s quite applicable on food pictures like the one that I tried here.

Q2
You might find Q2 a little strong in shadow and over-contrast when you set it on the maximum, color wise, it desaturated your photo just a little and give you that cross-processed look (mostly on the blue and green)! You probably won’t set the strength on its max very often, but with further adjustment it could easily become the “it” filter.

Q3
Q3 happens to be one of my favorite filters of this set. I love that it gives your picture the blue highlight with a little mix of warm feeling and overall contrast, rich saturation, but still pretty subtle.

Q4
Q4 will give your photo the blue feel, and after trying it to several pictures, I think it works well on minimalist building pictures and street photography.

Q5
Q5 is another save filter, for some reasons, it reminds me of the J2/J5 filter (if you know), it will desaturate your photo a little bit, enchance the contrast & shadow and give you that cross-processed film look, but still pretty much giving you that mild feel.

Q6
Q6 is for me the most "cross-processed", google "cross processing" if you don't know any. Or I can do another "free curve sunday?"

Works beautifully on sunset pictures, giving the blue shadow tint!

Q7
Short to say, Q7 is quite safe, it had that good green, blue and yellow process, resulting this “film” and retro highlight!

Q8
Q8 is actually pretty different comparing to the rest of the presets in the pack, but I just love colors like this with instense green shadows, sort of faded and very “film”, this preset is very fun to explore!

Q9
Q9 works beautifully and perfectly balanced on beach pictures with blue sky and blue water. Faded and soft blue is dominant on this preset and I found that quite pleasing for portraits as well. I also love applying the filter on buiding and architecture pictures!

 Q10
If you’re willing to explore, Q10 is also fun to explore and I’ve been experimenting with this particular filter. There’s something very gorgeous about the rich & saturated colors, something film-ish and classic about it, but still pretty much fun! It’s like the warmer and more industrial version of Q3 with a little fade that works perfectly on outdoor pictures, garden, field, sky and sunsets!

Up until now, I still constantly use VSCO’s classics like “The Legacy collection”, the Monochrome collection (especially A6) , Hypebeast HB2 and the "E" filters, judging from my need, I think I am going to stick with them . I still never use the “H”, som eof "J"s and “N” filters on my photos as I don’t think they fit my photo character. My personal favorites of this serie must be the Q5 and Q8, I just love the instant, greenish, cross-processed colors!

In a nutshell, VSCO’s Alchemy Collection consist of good cross-processed & industrial feel presets, and personally, judging from my pictures habit, most of the filters don’t fit instantly and I tend to stuck at the Q1, Q5 and Q7 for food pictures (and sometimes Q2) and I can’t really set it on the maximum effect, but if you’re into street photography, unique street findings, free-spirited, industrial and architecture photography, this would be quite groundbreaking.

So what’s your favorite filter of this set? Share share!

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VSCOCAM PHOTOSHOP TUTORIAL: HOW TO GET THE VSCO LOOK IN PHOTOSHOP!

In this tutorial, I am going to be showing you the easy and simple way to achieve that signature VSCO look on Photoshop as I received tons of requests to do this tutorial! Basically only three main steps that you need to follow and we're trying to achieve the T3 preset tone that would transform your photos like this:

Retro, faded and mild color.

Now let's start the eatandtreats three simple steps to create the VSCOcam look!

1. CURVES

First we're going to start off with the "curves" adjustment that you can find in ->

but make sure your base photo is good enough because that's the quintessential thing about photo editing.

You're going to see the "RGB" bar and first, we're going to do the adjustment to the "Red" curve, set the red line to look like this:

Now set the adjustment to the "Green" and set the position of the lines to look like this:

Moving on to the "Blue" adjustment, set the position of the lines to look like this:

Now set the adjustment back to "RBG" and set the curve to look like this:

2. HUE/SATURATION
Pretty satisfied of how the color looks after the "curve" adjustment but I found that certain areas are still a tad over-saturated so I want to tone everything to an equal balance by adjusting the hue and saturation, I set the hue on the "-1" and tone down the saturation to "-11".

3. EXPOSURE
Now this is like the golden gate to create that VSCO look, most VSCO presets have this faded feel that hit just right on the shadows and awesome at balancing the highlight, and I mostly use the "Exposure" adjustment to create the faded look. The reason why I prefer using "Exposure" instead of "Curves" for the editing is because if you want to apply this editing to another photo and wanting to do adjustments, it's easier to do it using the Exposure bar rather than curves. The "Offset" adjustment is where to adjust the shadow (the black area in a photo), the more you're setting the bar to the right, the more faded (nearly white) the photo will turn out. I like old looking faded pictures but less is more so I set the "Offset" to +0,0165 and the "Gamma" correction to 0,90 to add in a little contrast.

...and voila! The editing is pretty much done! Here's the before and after look.

I also apply this editing to these photos I found on the internet and I was quite satisfied with the result! I think this photo works best on backlight pictures, heavy blurred background pictures and top shot pictures with wood background :).

BEFORE

AFTER

Photo courtesy of Kinfolk.com

BEFORE

AFTER

Photo courtesy of Folies du Bonheur

BEFORE

AFTER

Photo courtesy of Kinfolk Table

Photo courtesy of blogparkerfitzgerald.com

Based on my experience dealing with colors and Photoshop, there will always be that one perfect tone for a photo, but one effect that works on a certain photo might not work with another photo, so the key is to practice practice practice and keep on experimenting with colors! I gotta admit I have been obsessing over Photoshop and colors.

Starting next week, I am going to be doing the eatandtreats Free Curve Sunday, the thing is, I am going to giveaway Photoshop curves (or tutorials) to enchance your pictures! I truly love to see people who have passion for Photography and I am more than pleased to help you in enhancing your pictures. I am creating some Photoshop actions (still developing them) and I am planning to sell it publicly in a few months. Crossed fingers that they'll come true soon <3.

I hope this tutorial helps! If you have any comments or questions, feel free to drop the comments below and don't forget to share this post <3.

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email: eatandtreatsindo@gmail.com