Turn IPhone Photos Into Vintage Film in 5 Minutes or Less

Nothing beats the vintage film aesthetic — except lugging a film camera everywhere you go. But in this simple FREE tutorial, you'll learn everything you need to know to quickly transform any photo on your iPhone's camera roll into an aesthetic film capture.

1. GIMP (free)
2. Dazz Cam (free, with a paid upgrade)*
3. Photos from your iPhone

For this tutorial, I'm going to use a sample image from the wonderful free stock photo website Unsplash! This photo's by Emma Swoboda.

*Unfortunately, Dazz Cam is only available on iOS. Android is not supported.

It's time to load your iPhone photos on your computer. If you have a Mac, it's easy: just open the Photos app. If you have a Windows PC, use a file or photo syncing service like Dropbox, Google Drive, Google Photos, etc. Anything that can get your photos from your phone to your computer.

Next, open a blank workspace in GIMP. You should only see sidebars and an empty gray space. If you see a white canvas, quit GIMP and open a new, blank workspace.

Finally, import your photo into GIMP: go to File > Open… and open your photo. You might see a dialogue asking if you want to keep the photo's color profile; choose keep. Now, you should see your photo in GIMP!

Go to Filters > Blur > Gaussian Blur… and adjust the radius of your blur. A higher number means more blur. Don't overdo it! I've applied a 4.5 radius because this is an incredibly sharp, high-res image. But for most pictures, that's too much. I'd recommend staying between a radius of 1.25 and 2.5 or 3.0. A blur lower than 1.25 won't be clearly seen, while anything above 2.5 or 3.0 will risk over-blurring. For pictures with people's faces, keep the blur closer to 1.25; for pictures without faces, explore closer to 2.5 or 3.0. A rule of thumb is to make sure you can always see the important details.

Go to Filters > Artistic > Softglow… and adjust the radius, brightness, and sharpness of your glow. There's no exact science to this, but here are some tips:

1. Keep the glow radius below 25. Otherwise, you risk blurring your photo too much.
2. Sharpness is a lot more flexible, but if you're stuck, keep it around the same level as the glow radius.
3. Keep the brightness below the glow radius and sharpness. Otherwise, you risk jumping from washed-out vintage to an ugly washed-out.

Go to Colors > Shadows-Highlights… and adjust. I'd recommend sticking to either shadows or highlights for simplicity. Here's how to pick: choose whichever illuminates the light source and doesn't wash out the subject. Sometimes it's shadows, sometimes it's highlights, but choose whichever brightens the photo's light source and not the subject. I'd recommend brightening up until the entire photo starts washing out, not just the light source.

Go to Colors > Levels… and you should see an "Adjust Color Levels" dialogue. But before we do that, let's take a quick detour into the science of computer colors:

You probably know the primary colors as red, yellow, and blue. But computers have three different primary colors: red, green, and blue (RGB). Each pixel on your screen is actually three tiny lights: a red light, a green light, and a blue light; how much each lights up determines the color of that pixel. All the lights lit up to the max makes white, all the lights turned off makes black. And every in between is a new color.

Because we haven't recolored the photo yet, the red, green, and blue channels should all have a value of 255 (that's the maximum). This doesn't mean the photo is white, like that would mean for a pixel, but instead that we haven't changed any of the values. We're seeing all the red, green, and blue values of the original photo. This means if we want to accent a particular color, we're going to be lowering the values of the other colors. For example, to accent green, we'd lower the red and blue values.

We're going to be tinting the photo either green or orange, to represent the discoloration of old film. Here's how to choose: go with green if you want the film to look older or more corrupted, or if you don't have people (or if you're okay affecting skin tone); go with orange if you have people or faces, or if you want the film to look more freshly developed.

1. If you're tinting green: go to the "Channel" dropdown and choose "Red," then adjust the value slider. Less is more! Anything less than 240 and the tint might appear overpowering or ugly. Especially since we're tinting green, a famously fickle and easily misused color. Once you've adjusted the red value slider, return to the dropdown and choose "Blue." Adjust the blue value slider to the same value you set the red slider. Here's a tip: your photo should be greener than you want, but not by much.
2. If you're tinting orange (or not tinting): go to the "Channel" dropdown and choose "Blue," then adjust the value slider. Try to keep it above 220 (you can adjust a little heavier than a green tint because orange is a lot less noticeable and overpowering). Once you've adjusted the blue value slider, return to the dropdown and choose "Green." Set the green value slider to half the value you set the blue slider.

Play around with the sliders until you're happy with the tint. (Again: the tint will likely be stronger than you want, but it shouldn't be stronger by much.)

Since we've applied a glow effect, the photo will probably be brighter than we want it. Go to Colors > Brightness-Contrast… and lower the brightness. Make it dimmer than you want, but bright enough to still see all the important details. But this step isn't as important as the others, because it's easy to adjust the brightness later!

All right, it's time to leave GIMP! Go to File > Export As… and export as a JPEG with the quality at 100.0. Save this image somewhere on your computer. (Don't worry — this file's temporary, and we'll delete it at the end of the tutorial!)

Next, let's get this photo file from your computer to your phone. If you have a Mac, it's easy: drag the file into the Photos app and wait for it to sync with iCloud. If you have a Windows, use the same file or photo syncing service you used to get the photo from your iPhone to your computer. But make sure you save this image to your Photos app!

After you've moved the photo to your iPhone, you can safely delete the file on your computer.

Next, open Dazz Cam on your iPhone. Press the camera illustration in the lower right corner, then choose the Inst C camera. This filter should be free for all users. Then press the down arrow in the lower right corner to return to the main screen, the Inst C camera now selected. (You should see an illustration of this camera in the lower right now.)

Now, import your photo. Press the icon with a photo and a plus and select your photo from your Photo Library. Dazz Cam will then generate your own instant film photo!

Congratulations! You've successfully converted a photo from your iPhone into a vintage film capture. Now, it's time to get your beautiful creation to your photos: with the film capture open in Dazz Cam, press the share icon in the bottom left corner and save the image to the Photos app.

You can keep and share the capture as-is, but if you want to remove the film frame, simply crop the photo in Photos. I personally like to keep traces of the inset shadow and white frame to look more authentic, like I'm sharing a true film photo, but it's entirely up to you! (You can now also safely delete the photo you imported from GIMP.)

One last note: if your photo appears too bright, bright or washed out enough to distract, just try again! Return to the photo from GIMP in the Photos app on your iPhone and lower the brightness. Then, return to Dazz Cam, import the new version, and check your progress. You can do this as many times as you need until your photo's no longer washed out (although a non-distracting wash out is a big part of the vintage film aesthetic).