Bleach bypass, cross-process, and other looks for After Effects

Cinematic-style picture looks have been popular for the last several years; for example bleach bypass became popular after Saving Private Ryan. Both Red Giant Magic Bullet Looks (released in 2007) and Tiffen Dfx Digital Filter Suite have a powerful and pleasant interface designed to develop and control looks, but there are additional resources available to After Effects users still without access.

Color Finesse, which ships with After Effects, has both bleach bypass and cross-process presets (and many others) in the Gallery pane of the full interface. For resources on CF, see White balance + more with Color Finesse. For a filmic contrast "look" check out ft-Filmic Contrast, and then ft-Technicolor, which mimics 2-strip and 3-strip technicolor processes seen in The Aviator. Both are basic AE Script filters by Francois Tarlier.

You can can usually easily recreate Photoshop effects in AE, so check out Creating a Faux Lomo/Plastic Camera Effect with Photoshop Elements by David Asch and HDR Toning Black and White Images by Richard Harrington, How To Give Your Photos a Dark Processed Lomo Effect from Spoon Graphics, and the soft dreamy Orton effect created by photographer Michael Orton. Plus, there are several tutorials for After Effects for making old film looks.

Here's some do-it-yourself (mostly video) approaches for making bleach bypass and cross-processed looks:

1) Bleach Bypass: How to do it in your application text by Stephen Schleicher

2) Using Curves to Simulate Bleach ByPass text by Filip Vandueren

3) Simple Bleach Bypass by Andrew Kramer

4) Bleach Bypass Effect by Grant Swanson

5) Creating a Bleach Bypass Effect by Nick at ProJuice. Embedded below, the video shows one way for AE or Final Cut Pro using two layers, or another from Creative Cow for AE.

1) Curvy Cross Processing in Photoshop CS3 at Layers magazine.

2) Cross processing in After Effects by Giovanni Antico (in Italian; Google Chrome translates text reliably)

3) AE Help has a formula for a cross-process look in Camera RAW; something similar is on AdobeTV.

4) Some AE presets are available from Murat Erozturk. and from Pixel Art, which also posted Lomo Effect After Effects Tutorial.

5) In an After Effects tutorial embedded below, Andy Dykstra of GhostRender shows you how to create a cross-process look with some basic Curves.

After Effects Cross Process Look from Andy Dykstra on Vimeo.