December Preset: Japanese Blues

Hellooo :)

It's time to finish off the year with the last preset of 2023 - this is "Japanese Blues".

There's a popular look in especially Japanese photography that I've encountered that broadly could be described as high-key, hazy and blue. Inspired by that look and thinking that you might enjoy it too, I decided to create my version of that look with a little bit of my own spin on it.

It is certainly a stylised look with an overall shift to a teal hue, but without destructing other colours, especially the skin tones.

For a change I didn't add any notes to the previews here, because I really didn't do much on all of them and they're all pretty similar. As always this preset is intended to be your base edit from where a few little adjustments will still be necessary. In the examples the White Balance was always in the 4800K-5000K area, so a bit colder than plain daylight. Also keep the hue away from magenta on a rather neutral level or even slightly in the green. These were scenes in which the Tint wasn't influenced too much anyway so the Tint was usually between 0 and -5.

Lastly I recommend to always check your exposure setting. In the preset I've actually baked in a -0,2 exposure decrease to counteract the curve that I added which brightens the mid-tones. However this look thrives in bright scenes and bright images so if you underexposed your photo I suggest increasing the exposure slider. I sometimes even went as far as +1,5 to get a really bright and airy look.

This look is intended to be bright and airy, so I would recommend it for sunny photographs and ideally in urban areas. Of course you can try it on other scenes, but I think it will work best in the types of scenes I explained.

I hope you enjoy this one! Wishing you a happy new year, see you soon! :))

Teo