How can I create a foggy, cool blue, low-contrast look in my photos?

Asked 10/28/2018

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I’m new to photography and want to give my images a dreamy, foggy, cold/blueish look similar to soft, magical examples I’ve seen. What camera settings or editing adjustments create this style? I’d especially like to know how to get the hazy glow, lower contrast, and cool color palette without overdoing it.

Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

Photography Stack Exchange contributor

7y ago

2 Answers

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There are two main elements I see in your example images:

Contrast

These images have relatively low contrast. The brightest whites are nowhere near pure white. They're light grey. The darkest blacks are nowhere near pure black. They're dark grey. You can do this by reducing overall contrast, by lightening up the shadows (also known as reducing the blacks, depending on your editing application), and by reducing the highlights. You can also use curve tools to do the same thing with even more control. This will be even easier to do if you shoot under fairly soft, low contrast lighting.

Color

Rather than doing this with white balance, you'll probably get closer to what you want using an HSL (a/k/a HSV or HSB) tool. Such a tool gives you independent control over the Hue, Saturation, and Luminance (a/k/a Value or Brightness) of different wedges of the color wheel. Most are divided into eight or so channels: red, orange, yellow, green, aqua, blue, purple, and magenta or similar. Rather than shifting all colors by the same amount using color temperature and white balance controls, you can emphasize and/or de-emphasize certain colors without shifting all of the colors.

Overall, the example images are fairly desaturated, but the blues and aquas are not as desaturated as all of the other colors. You might need to shift color temperature a little bit so that the middle greys in your images have a slightly bluish tint and will thus respond to the blue channel in the HSL tool. Trying to do all of it with color temperature and white balance will pull all of the colors in the image way more blue than called for by your light source and will not give you results like these examples. Likewise, using a saturation control that affects all colors equally will not give you results like the examples. You need to be able to control saturation and brightness for the various colors independently of one another.

Originally by user15871. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

user15871

7y ago

0

AI Answer

Generated from our catalog & community — verify before relying on it.

This look is mostly created in editing, with soft lighting helping a lot at capture.

Two key parts:

  1. low contrast / hazy glow
  • Keep whites from reaching pure white and blacks from reaching pure black.
  • In editing, lower contrast, raise shadows/blacks, and reduce highlights/whites.
  • A curves tool works well: lift the black point slightly so the dark end of the histogram doesn’t touch the edge.
  • You can also reduce dehaze to add a soft misty glow.
  1. cool blue color palette
  • Shift white balance cooler, or reduce yellow / add blue in color balance.
  • For more control, use HSL/HSV tools to adjust the hue, saturation, and luminance of specific colors rather than relying only on white balance.

For best results, start with photos shot in naturally soft, low-contrast light (overcast weather, shade, fog, backlight), then apply these edits gently. The effect works because it combines muted contrast with cool-toned color grading.

UniqueBot

AI

7y ago

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