Mikko Miettinen

Here is the comparison image with original and processed photo. Click the image to open bigger.

Info about the real Technicolor in Wikipedia.

I did some research in the internet and studied how could I reverse-engineer this film process technique to a digital program like Photoshop and found many good sites discussing the same topic. Here is my little tutorial how to achieve this film look in digital photo processing software. It really does not matter what program you use, but at least you should be able to do following things; conversion to CMYK color mode, editing of the individual color channels and color balancing / curves adjusting.  I´ll go with Adobe Photoshop since it´s the most familiar program to many of the people. Also some basic knowledge of Photoshop or other similar program is needed.

First some points that you should consider before starting the process on your photo:
-as usual it´s better to have a good bit depth on the original, like 16 bit
-photo should have vibrant colors and variety of (pure) colors
-very dark photos won´t work so good
-white balance should be quite neutral in original
-don´t process the photo too much in advance
-getting same result on different photos can take some adjusting (in processing)
-blue sky and red clothes in the photo adds the maximum effect  🙂

Ok..So now that your photo is balanced “perfectly” you are ready to start the process. I´ll go through step by step.

THE PROCESS:
1. Open your balanced original.
2. Convert your RBG original to CMYK color mode (keep it 16 bit).
3. Select your canvas (Ctrl + A).
4. Change your background color (in color selection boxes) to white.
5. With the selection on go to the Channels tab.
6. Select the cyan channel (..highlights with blue in Photoshop).
7. Press DEL key, now cyan channel should turn to 100% white.
8. Still with selection on select the yellow channel.
9. Press DEL key, now yellow channel should turn to 100% white.
10. Ok, now you have the magenta layer (magenta + black) created.
11. With the selection still on, go back to Layers tab.
12. Take a copy of the layer (Ctrl + C)
13. Make a new document with same dimensions, but in RGB color mode. DO NOT CLOSE THE ORIGINAL!
14. Paste the copied layer (magenta) to new document (Ctrl + V). You can delete the white background layer, it´s not needed.
15. Go back to the original document.
16. Now you need to go few steps backwards (History steps) to get the original appearance back. To do this press Ctrl + Alt + Z  few times so you see image turn to original. You can also do this from EDIT menu  -> Step Backward.
17. Ok, now you´re back to original photo?
18. Select the canvas again (Ctrl + A).
19. Go to the Channels tab (with the selection on).
20. Now you´re going to do steps 6-10 but instead of deleting the cyan and yellow channel you delete the magenta and yellow channel.
21. After doing this you should have left the cyan channel (cyan + black).
22. With the selection still on, go to Layers tab.
23. Take a copy of the layer (Ctrl + C)
24. Go to your newly created (RGB) document.
25. Paste the new cyan layer on top of the magenta layer (Ctrl + V).
26. Now you are done with the original file, you can close it (Don´t save it of course).
27. If you did everything right you should now have a new RGB document with two layers (magenta and cyan). Cyan on top.
28. Change the blending mode of the cyan layer to multiply.
29. Select the magenta layer.
30. Create a curves adjustment layer on top of the magenta.
31. With Alt key pressed down move your cursor to exact middle of the curve adjustment layer and magenta layer (in layers tab). Cursor should change in the right place, press left mouse button. Adjustment layer should clip inside the magenta layer, so it cannot affect the other layers.
32. Go to the curves adjustment layer settings, select the Blue channel.
33. Adjust the blue curve middle point (middletones) down to add some yellow to the magenta layer. Basically you want that layer to be somewhat orange.
34. Select the cyan layer.
35. Add curves adjustment layer on top of the cyan layer.
36. Press left mouse button with Alt key pressed down to clip the curves adjustment layer inside cyan layer (this is like step 31.).
37. Now add just some yellow to the cyan, also try to get nice balance by setting other color channel curves too.
38. Adjust the balance with both of the Curve adjustments layers.
39. Also try decreasing fill of the cyan layer to get better balance between the colors.

Now you should have the 2-strip Technicolor look alike process on your photo, I hope my explanation was not too complicated. The results can vary a lot between different photos, so I urge you to try different curve settings and balances. You can easily vary the technique by changing the curves adjustment layer to for example color balance adjustment layer, it´s possible to achieve the same result with different approaches. I also would recommend doing Photoshop action for this kind of time taking processing.  🙂