I’ve had a fascination with the Leica ‘look’ ever since I first went on a shoot with a digital Leica M rangefinder. The contrast and colors were exceptionally intense, the M-series lenses added a subtle vignette at wider apertures and there was an intriguing shift in the color palette compared to the clinical accuracy of other cameras.
You’ll see this same intense look in the work of Leica photographers and in many of the galleries, exhibitions and portfolios promoted by Leica. So everything is possible in the digital darkroom and it must be possible to replicate this rich and intense look in editing software, right?
Reproducing the Leica ‘look’
Well, I think I’ve got pretty close (not quite there maybe, but close), and this is how I did it. I’m using Capture One, but it shouldn’t be hard to replicate these processes in other editors like Lightroom Classic or DxO PhotoLab.
1. First, the film ‘look’. I’m using one of the ‘Beyond Film’ presets for Capture One, a paid Style pack, which applies a film-like palette to the colors and a stronger contrast which gives the intensity of color and the crushed dark tones which I associate with the Leica ‘look’ – the screenshot below shows the before/after comparison. Lightroom Classic has plenty of presets and profiles which can do similar things.
2. This isn’t always enough on its own. Very often I will need to adjust the contrast or curves to get the intensity I want. The Leica ‘look’ is typically high contrast with crushed shadows and perhaps a light vignette effect. And then there’s the editing. There’s usually some selective dodging and burning to bring out faces, solidify shadows or recover bright skies – see below.
3. But there’s one more crucial ingredient. The Leica ‘style’ isn’t just about how images are edited, but how they are seen and framed and captured. Leica’s reputation is founded in the genres of street photography, reportage and all kinds of celebrations of the strange, the surreal and the unexplained – which is what this image is all about. My Leica ‘look’ only works on images which I’ve shot in this style. It turns out that the editing adjustments I make to an image are only a small part of the equation, and it’s actually the subject matter itself which completes the effect.
Can editing styles and shooting styles be separated?
This is something that’s rarely discussed but rather important. A ‘look’ is often so closely tied to a specific genre or style of photography that it doesn’t really work outside of that. My Leica ‘look’ is only convincing when it’s applied to images that are already in the Leica shooting style.
This, I think, is a real issue for editing styles and presets in general. Presets are not simple one-click cure-alls for all kinds of photographs. They have to be applied to image styles they are designed for. Timeless vintage presets only work on photographs that are themselves timeless and have no signs of the modern world in them. Soft and dreamy wedding presets only work on images which have been shot in a way that lends itself to this treatment.
Presets and editing styles are so intertwined with the subjects you’re shooting and the way you shoot them, that I’m not sure you can have one without the other. Editing presets are not some kind of magic bullet for creating an effect. In fact they are perhaps just the second half of a process that starts with how you see and take photographs
