Photoshop Lomography Photo Action

June 11, 2006 by Emanuele Feronato
Filed Under Photoshop •  

I am always looking for nice effects to give to my photos.

The “Lomo” effect is one of them.

From Wikipedia: Lomography is a commercial trademark of Lomographische AG, Austria for products and services related to photography. The name is licensed from a former state-run optics company LOMO PLC in St. Petersburg, Russia. The 35 mm LOMO LC-A camera employed an unusual lens which produced large amounts of distortion at the edges of the image whilst keeping the center sharp, and was promoted by businessmen from Austria with international gallery shows.

Lomography emphasizes casual, snapshot photography. Accidents such as over-saturated colors, lens artifacts, and exposure defects are rehabilitated to produce swirly, abstract effects — a trait emphasized by practitioners. Others use the technique to document everyday life, because the small camera size and ability to shoot in low light encourages candid photography, photo reportage and photo vérité.

The lens effect (although perhaps not the philosophy) can be partially emulated in photo-editing programs, such as Gimp or Photoshop.

Why not creating an action that to automatically emulate Lomography? Here it is!!!

I divided the action into two parts: the first one with just saturation/brightness/contrast adjustments, and the second one with edge blurring.

Before

Before Lomography

after saturation/brightness/contrast adjustments

Lomography in progress

final result

After Lomography

Download the action

If you use this action and are satisfied of the result, please tell me where to find your before/after photos to add them to my example page, and help me with your feedback.

This is a photo sent me by Tim Stet (www.timstet.nl) using my lomography action

Lomo by Tim Stet

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79 Responses to “Photoshop Lomography Photo Action”

  1. Daniel Redick on July 5th, 2006 8:08 pm

    Kool effect bro…works GREAT!!! i’ve been looking for just that type of effect for a while..thanks

  2. ray on July 23rd, 2006 6:27 pm

    Does this .atn work with PS 8 on OSX ?

    The preset manager won’t load the .atn..

    Any help / guidance appreciated !

    Cheers,

    Ray

  3. Emanuele Feronato on July 24th, 2006 9:11 am

    Sorry I cant’ test it on a OSX at the moment.
    Did anyone test it?

  4. Asif Iqbal on July 27th, 2006 1:30 pm

    F***in’ Awesome Man!! Just Lomo-ed a pic it looks real cool. This effect makes it look so damn agressive. I’m gonna do it on all my pics.

    Thanks for this. Thanks a lot, mate. Will post a link when I’m done and uploaded them all.

  5. Asif Iqbal on July 27th, 2006 1:37 pm

    I am a Photoshop newbie. And there’s this dialog box that comes before the last one. What can I do about it?

    THE COMMAND “LENS BLUR” IS NOT CURRENTLY AVAILABLE.

    Is this an error? Am I missing some filter/effect?

  6. Emanuele Feronato on July 27th, 2006 1:56 pm

    I am happy you enjoyed it.
    Why don’t you send me a pic or two?

    About lens blur, I am afraid it’s only available on CS and higher.
    Simply skip it or replace with gaussian blur.
    Let me know what are you doing.

  7. Eduardo on July 31st, 2006 8:56 pm

    Hi,

    I tried on Mac Os X and it works great.
    Congratulations…. and Thanks.

    Some of your actions are in working here in brazil now….

  8. Tim Stet on August 19th, 2006 12:52 pm

    Hello there,

    I am a photographer that for work, practically always have to use a digital camera.
    I have difficulty with creating an image in post-process to create an attractive atmosphere as the camera itself creates to clean of an image.
    After searching the net for a day i downloaded loads of filters, plugins, actions and editorials about this.
    Well, I just mail you to say that your ‘triqui lomo’ action is superb!
    It’s a heavy thing off course, and therefor not suitable for many images, but it has definately created the effect I wanted for some.
    I attached a photo, to show you an example of ‘our’ work. (I am now working on a serie wich is even better with your action, but this is still in progress)

    So.. once again, thancks for making this action available, really appreciate it!

    Kind regards,

    Tim Stet
    http://www.timstet.nl

    ps. It did make me feel that, for me, there is still a lot to learn about PS, just when I thought that I was becomming quite good…

  9. Asif Iqbal on August 19th, 2006 2:54 pm

    Hey Emanuele. Remember me, comment #4 and #5. A’right. So I just worked your great Lomo effect on some pics and here’s the result man.

    I’ve uploaded about 13 pics in a Flickr set - Lomo-dified. Do enjoy, it’s not much just a newbie’s clicks.

  10. kim mb on August 26th, 2006 1:04 am

    I’m using Photoshop CS on a Mac and this script worked perfectly. i can’t believe i’ve lived without it for so long.

    here’s a like to my photos on flickr.

    kim

  11. Lindsey on September 30th, 2006 7:06 am

    Hi, I used your lomography action on a few snap shots and they came out beautifully. Do you want me to email you them and if so, where should I send them. Thanks!

  12. johann on November 15th, 2006 5:36 am

    superb effects. it has that “professional” feel to it. tried the action on some of my photos and it turned out great. thanks emanuele, keep up the good work.

  13. Jo S. on November 20th, 2006 2:55 pm

    I used this effect with PS CS on Mac OSX and it worked beautifully. I had never heard of Lomo until I started working for a magazine in China called Lomo Life. This is such a nice effect, very striking. Link to a picture that’s been Lomo’d- http://img223.imageshack.us/img223/7830/img0584lomopa7.jpg

  14. sunsurfr on December 1st, 2006 4:17 pm

    I used this effect on a picture and loved the results. Thanks.
    http://www.flickr.com/photos/sunsurfr/310733343/

  15. Ahdoorubble on December 2nd, 2006 3:27 pm

    I get the message after extracting and loading into PhotoShop that it is not a valid file name. I have not done anything but download it. Does anyone have suggestion on what I need to do? I’d like to try this. Thanks for Sharing!

    AhDoo

  16. Ahdoorubble on December 2nd, 2006 3:44 pm

    I got it to work. I didn’t realize there were 3 versions. I love the monochromatic sepia like effect. Thanks a zillion.
    AhDoo

  17. john on December 11th, 2006 9:12 am

    nice…but i think it will be better with more vignette..

  18. Scot Wharton on December 14th, 2006 10:45 pm

    Just wanted to let you know that I used this action for this grasshopper macro shot…. http://onetphotography.blogspot.com/

  19. Aurock on December 15th, 2006 12:14 am

    I’m sorry, but how does one utilize such actions in Photoshop?

  20. Aurock on December 15th, 2006 12:45 am

    I got it to work! And it is pretty cool, though I think the actio works much better with light-colored objects/people than darker ones. And this is from a darker-skinned person’s perspective. Not disimilar from when I was in film school, changing exposures for different complexions. So I had to make some alterations. But yeah, thanks for the Action. Peace.

  21. Ragheb Alama on December 23rd, 2006 12:01 pm

    iqbal’s

    Interesting post. I came across this blog by accident, but it was a good accident. I have now bookmarked your blog for future use. Best wishes. Ragheb Alama Website Team.

  22. eMarkLee » Blog Archive » Don’t be a Lomophobe on January 16th, 2007 3:20 am

    [...] I decided to see how I could simulate the Lomo Fisheye effect with Photoshop CS2. First to simulate the Fisheye effect, then to simulate the Lomo effect. I found a Photoshop action here, which seems to give the effect I am looking for. [...]

  23. scribble on January 17th, 2007 12:55 pm

    How do I make use of the action after I’ve extracted it?

  24. scribble on January 17th, 2007 1:04 pm

    Got it! I couldn’t find it on your site, but it might be useful to put up a tutorial on how to load the actions. :)

  25. blues note on January 29th, 2007 3:30 am

    i tried extracting the file and it gave me a bunch of gibberish. is there any way of sending me the steps via email? i’m really eager to try this style out! danke!

  26. steve on February 14th, 2007 1:18 pm

    Thanks! I’ve used your action in Photoshop CS2 and CS3 (beta). Interestingly the vignette seems to have shrunk a bit in CS3.

    I love the results, and have run this one over many of my shots.

  27. Trish on February 15th, 2007 8:56 am

    Hey there –

    I love the photo of the yellow car and what you did with it using Photoshop. I have “Photoshop Elements 4.0″ — will it work on that? I’ve saved the action/script to my PC, and I tried to open it with Adobe (right click, open with, Photoshop), but nothing’s happening. I’m a complete novice, so I’m guessing I’m doing it incorrectly. Could you please walk me through the steps? Many thanks.

  28. Photografía :: Lomografia en Photoshop on February 17th, 2007 8:58 pm

    [...] Emanuele Feronato LOMO acction [...]

  29. d i l a p i d a t e . n e t » Lomography I on February 19th, 2007 6:26 am

    [...] Experimenting with Photoshop post-processing to simulate Lomography. Big kudos to Emanuele Feronato for the Photoshop plug-in, and Digital Photography School, without which I’d probably never have heard of the technique in the first place. [...]

  30. Steve Bender on March 7th, 2007 10:54 pm

    Thanks so much! This really is a great action. Easy to use, perfect.

  31. Robert on March 11th, 2007 10:28 pm

    This action is just great!!! Always had a look like it produces in the back of my head… Thank you very much.

    http://flickr.com/photos/robert-neumann/sets/72157594582712213/

  32. ariefous on March 29th, 2007 8:42 am

    Can you kindly provide me the photoshop action for vintage-look effect?…i`ve been searching for it…Thanks in advance, good day~~~!

  33. Julep Style » Blog Archive » Hello Lomo on June 14th, 2007 3:13 pm

    [...] I’ve been coveting a lomographic camera for my birthday; in researching lomography, I came across the neat-o action set from emanueleferonato.com that you can use in photoshop to change any photo to one of the lomographic persuasion. [...]

  34. Lomography, make photos look like lomo photography at Imaging Insider on June 18th, 2007 9:24 am

    [...] Download Lomo Photoshop Action… [...]

  35. Alicia Stepp on July 10th, 2007 10:16 pm

    I love love love this action! Thank you so much.
    The lomo effect adds SO much to a photo.

    Here’s two of mine :

    Thanks again!

  36. Adele on July 17th, 2007 8:54 am

    Well, I can’t buy you a beer (or two) but I can sure leave a very grateful comment. =] Thanks a lot for your help. Really. I have been looking for a lovely way to mimic the wonderful Lomo effect for quite awhile now.

  37. rjnworks on July 19th, 2007 5:05 am

    i’m going crazy over this lomo thing to the point im thinking of buying an lc-a. however when i stumbled into your site, i was thinking twice if i have to purchase one.. lol

    your ps lomo action is amazing, i was able to apply it in my unpublished photos and there you have it an artwork using your Lomography Photo Action…

    thanks a lot… here is the link of my lomo effects album
    http://rjnworks.multiply.com/photos/album/25

    -renen

  38. Fun with Photoshop Actions : TheWeeJenny.net on August 15th, 2007 9:29 am

    [...] One of the folks in my Vox neighborhood posted a link to this funky Lomo photoshop action a little while ago and I just got around to trying it. I’ve never really used actions before, pretty sad considering I’ve played with Photoshop on and off for a few years now. I chose and interesting pic I took of Nibbler recently and tried a few different ones, including the Lomo effect. They all turned out kinda neat because the original photo was a little bit distorted and dreamy to begin with. [...]

  39. 3AM on August 17th, 2007 8:06 pm

    This action is just awesome!! Thank you very much for sharing it!

  40. dilapidate » Lomography I: Chain on August 18th, 2007 4:50 pm

    [...] Experimenting with Photoshop post-processing to simulate Lomography. Big kudos to Emanuele Feronato for the Photoshop plug-in, and Digital Photography School, without which I’d probably never have heard of the technique in the first place. [...]

  41. randell on September 5th, 2007 7:32 am

    how do i make the action work? where do i put it? im using photoshop cs.
    thanks

  42. Outing Deal » Blog Archive » Owners to Sell Las Vegas’ Aging Sahara on September 5th, 2007 9:41 am

    [...] Next I got on the lomography bandwagon. I tried Dumpr’s instant-n-easy method plus a couple of downloadable actions. This action is my favourite and I used it on the good old Golden Gate casino downtown, as show below. [...]

  43. Susan on September 6th, 2007 8:38 pm

    Thanks for this very cool action!

  44. My Scrapping Life » My Layouts: San Juan Safari on September 7th, 2007 8:19 am

    [...] I played with the pics using various free actions from the web.  I used a black and white and a sepia and then played with blending modes.  I liked the effect of having the skin tones be a reddish color and most of the pic in b&w.  Here’s a cool site with free PS actions.  If you don’t have “Urban Acid” or “Triqui Lomo” actions you have to try them out. [...]

  45. Pudding on September 14th, 2007 12:41 am

    Aloha, used your Lomo action on a few of my dolly shots & I really love the effect. I might just have to buy me a lomo camera just for the novelty of having it with me to take some snaps. Anyway, your action works great I can’t use the Blur lens because I have an older version of PS but I still like the effect anyway. Maybe you can make one for PS7 users also. Again Much thanks.

  46. Tinayums on September 16th, 2007 9:15 pm

    hey there emanuel,

    your actions is pretty amazing! thanks so much for the tip..

    another thing i want to ask from a PRO like you, i am searching for tips on how to make glossy pictures..(dont know if i used the words exactly) but visiting below site will be helpful to what i mean:

    http://www.pbase.com/manny_librodo

    i hope you’ll find time to reply to me!

    cheers,

    tinayums

  47. Royalty free stock photos and images on September 18th, 2007 7:17 am

    [...] in Flash or other design tools Kirupa is an awesome resource for things outside of Photoshop also. Emanuele Feronato’s blog This guy created a great lomographic photoshop action. Not sure if it is true Lomography but it [...]

  48. Charina Razon on September 21st, 2007 3:26 am

    hello,
    would like to ask you how come i downloaded the triqui lomo and it does not work or open in my photoshop version? am using cs2
    please help me
    thnks in advance
    regards,
    charina

  49. Karen on September 24th, 2007 9:31 am

    I used your action on a picture of a model train set and I think it came out great! You can find the after picture here: http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1074/1431056377_3586208dfd_b.jpg

    and the before picture here: http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1016/1431019365_456970ba18_b.jpg

  50. toti on September 24th, 2007 4:24 pm

    the file i downloaded (triqui lomo)doesn’t work with my cs3…pls tell me how will it work…thanks

  51. geir on October 6th, 2007 11:44 am

    Hi! Exploring the world of lomography, trying to get the tool to work in PS Elements 2.0 on mac OSX 10.3.9, unsuccessfully. Any tips, anyone? All the best!

  52. maan on October 10th, 2007 11:54 am

    i’ve tried downloading “the action” but it has a file extension of .atn and it won’t open, what should i do? i really want to try this one on my pictures…

  53. Jenn on October 29th, 2007 4:38 am

    ahh! It works with PSE 5! Thanks so much!!

  54. Jenn on October 29th, 2007 4:45 am

    oops! darn it. I spoke too soon. It applies it to my pic fine but for some reason it won’t save the effects! :( bummer!

  55. vincent on November 3rd, 2007 8:10 am

    thank you! enjoyed the effect very much =)

  56. Cornell Finch - Seriously? Seriously! on November 5th, 2007 5:18 pm

    [...] post which mentioned Lomography. Not having GIMP I went searching for a Photoshop action, finding Emanuele’s Action for [...]

  57. How to Create LOMO Effect in Nikon Capture NX | Digital Photography Tips and Techniques on November 12th, 2007 7:31 am

    [...] Photoshop lomography photo action [...]

  58. Lina on November 25th, 2007 5:21 pm

    Hi,
    I tried to use your triquilomo, but it didn’t work. When I’m opening the file, the photoshop CS3
    opens but then I don’t know what to do… I’m a beginner at photoshop, but I would really like to try using this effevt, it looks great.
    /Lina

  59. Andreh on November 26th, 2007 3:00 am

    Its a great effect! Thanks :D

  60. kemalasan melanda « litiumOnline on December 3rd, 2007 6:02 pm

    [...] tone curve, ejas color level, naikkan warna dan contrast, cropping, tambah efek seperti vignetting, lomo, silhouette, blur, black and white, sephia dan compile dalam kolaj yang konon-kononnya menarik. [...]

  61. Yolanda on December 4th, 2007 11:33 pm

    Is there a way to make the effect save in PSE5? It works up until the very last step. Someone mentioned 3 versions. The only one I got was a sepia tinted one. Thanks.

  62. DontAskDontTell on December 5th, 2007 7:05 pm

    Wow! An

    AUTOMATED

    process

    TO MAKE CRAPPY PICTURES!!!

  63. phalkunz’s blog » Blog Archive » Lomography effect on December 14th, 2007 11:26 am

    [...] was browsing for lomo camera yesterday and then I came across this post in which the author provides a lomography photoshop action. I tried it out and I was like [...]

  64. JuicyTools on January 8th, 2008 12:01 am

    I have a downloadable Lomo Photoshop action as well! Check it out…

    http://www.juicytools.com/graphics/free-lomo-photoshop-filter-download/

  65. Highly Ticked in a High World » oh my gah! on January 24th, 2008 1:55 am

    [...] totally loving this fake lomo effect. I thought I’d post this before I went to [...]

  66. Cindy on February 1st, 2008 9:08 pm

    Where do you download the file to so you can find it when you open your photoshop???

  67. fluffballs on February 22nd, 2008 8:37 pm

    Great effect, I love it. Check out my pic here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/fluffballs/2284395026/

  68. Lomography : Hogue Chronicle on March 21st, 2008 9:44 am

    [...] In Photoshop, I found this action set you could use > [...]

  69. SprayBlood on March 24th, 2008 3:37 pm

    Great~~man~!!!!! that is exactly what I want!!! Many thanks!!!!!

  70. Lomographie ? - Leica User Forum on March 24th, 2008 11:14 pm

    [...] info on the web Here on Cross-processing: Photoshop Fine Art Effects Cookbook Here on unsharpness: Photoshop Lomography Photo Action : Emanuele Feronato - italian geek and PROgrammer Hope this is some help All the best Ruben Angehängte [...]

  71. Anj Lim on April 6th, 2008 3:59 am

    really cool actions. I tried it on one of our wedding photos and my husband liked it.

  72. nicolas on April 26th, 2008 9:43 pm

    hello my name is nico but you can call me cowgoose
    (that’s my nick name). i’m from indonesia. i just want to tell you abot your action… it’s f*** man
    and if you have any action more, contact me at cow_goose@yahoo.com.

    terima kasih (english:thank you)

  73. Charlie on May 2nd, 2008 11:00 pm

    Don’t expect any help from freeloaders on here. They use the free stuff to improve their photos, then act like they did it all by themselves.

  74. Javier on May 4th, 2008 12:08 pm

    Hello, llevaba tiempo buscando un script para PS, para convertir mis fotos a lomo-fotos.
    Tu script está muy bien, he creado una lomo-foto de 4 disparos (la que más me gusta), PUEDES VERLA EN: http://javier.astycom.net/?p=231

  75. emily on June 26th, 2008 5:58 pm

    these are my pictures without using this effect because i downloaded the file, zipped. and extracted them. i’m not sure what to do with them. i’m only 14 but photography is what i want to do. please help me!

  76. Lomography I: Chain // Gravec.at on July 24th, 2008 6:19 am

    [...] with Photoshop post-processing to simulate Lomography. Big kudos to Emanuele Feronato for the Photoshop plug-in, and Digital Photography School, without which I’d probably never have [...]

  77. s. on August 16th, 2008 3:49 pm

    http://www.flickr.com/photos/mohlao

    the last picture. i used only a few parts of the action.

  78. Eccles on August 25th, 2008 8:18 pm

    I INSTALLED YOUR ACTION ON MAC OSX AND NOW PHOTOSHOP WONT OPEN PROPERLY. IT WONT ALLOW ME TO OPEN A DOCUMENT AT ALL AS IS THEREFOR USELESS. GOT ANY IDEAS, OR FIXES?

  79. The Holganizer | poindexter, who? on September 1st, 2008 9:33 am

    [...] a good Holga action, see the previous link. There are tons of LOMO actions for Photoshop and The Gimp, just a google search [...]

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