How to Color Imitate Another Image, Process, Tips & Tricks

Model: @ana_plumpuddin (left) & @rileyrasmussen • Photography: Rose Colored Life Photography (left) & @jon.snip

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Did you know?

Famous Instagram photographers often upload RAW unedited images and let strangers and fellow photographers edit their images in any way that we want. I love FFA's. I recommend practicing your editing by using these perfectly shot professional photos if you have just started because editing is crazy hard! Instagram FFA contests happen every so often and it is hard to predict when and where they will pop up. I recommend following hashtags like #ffa and #100kffa #uniqueffa, etc to get started. Then just click through some of the uploaded recent images, find the photographer linked in caption, follow that photographer and see if they have a link in bio to a Dropbox or Google Drive with their RAW images and instructions for the contest. I literally practiced all my editing like this at first.

That being said, you can imitate anyone's image color, tones, and mood with these steps.

1. Make sure the overall mood and light match.

You probably will not be able to make a harsh lit image have the feel of a back lit golden hour image.

2. Open both images in Photoshop and let the fun begin.

Open your image and the image whose color you plan on imitating. It can even be your own that you love and want to be consistent with in color and style. I actually edited the image on the right for color and tone before I matched the image to the left to it. Edit your image with hidden Lightroom RAW presents directly in Photoshop (skip straight to min 3:04 if you want). In fact, I love PiXimperfect tutorials. He is awesome and I will be linking his content A LOT. No need for me to recreate his awesome tips here.

3. You can mimic the basic tone and color of ANY image!

Follow the steps in this tutorial to steal the color grading from your admired image. It's pretty simple to follow and you will be amazed!

4. Match skin tones throughout all your images.

Do not trust your eyes when it comes to skin tones. Follow these steps to learn how to make all your skin tones look great and consistent in EVERY portrait you edit.

5. Learn how to edit skin with Frequency Separation.

It will change your life. Skin is not perfect but we don't want our models to look like blurry edited blobs either. Learn how to use frequency separation techniques to make your images look professional.

6. Save an insane amount of time with Beautify Panel for Photoshop.

Don't want to spend hours (like I did once) learning techniques like frequency separation, dodge & burn and eye editing techniques? Or maybe Photoshop is a foreigner to you. Maybe you just want to edit really fast. This inexpensive Photoshop plugin called Beautify Panel will save your life! If you don't want to spend the money on it though, then do learn the techniques in order to create high end portraits.

Comment below or message me if you have any questions!