I have always been a fan of VSCO film packs, for either the photos on my iPhone or camera photos with Lightroom. However that may be about to change.
I present to you Real Nice Images Film Presets. These guys have been around the block since 2012 and promises users the opportunity to enhance digital photos with Instagram-like simulations.
“What makes us getting back to distinctive analog colours and grain again and again? We believe the reason is character. It is something in human nature to strive for perfection but to love for character.” ~ RNI
I couldn’t agree more with this quote. We just keep going back.
About a week ago RNI, knowing my love for photography, offered me the entire pack of the new RNI Film V3.0 Presets, and I couldn’t be happier! I played with it for a while and it really surprised me the subtle way they can enhance a photo — so I had to talk about it here.
Having said that, a disclaimer is in order: this review is my own opinion and point of view; I was not paid to do it, and all of the following is unbiased.
RNI Film Presets are divided into five different packs, designed to give you different results: Negative Films, Slide Films, Instant Films, Vintage Films, and Black & White.
One of my favourite packs is the Slide Films. The colours are superb and I just love that warmness you can feel out of the photo. It doesn’t completely alter the colours of the photo like some of the others, but it gives it enough change to make all the right colours pop, in a good way.
The presets are nicely constructed and it’s easy to change a feature if you don’t like the end result. For the Instant Film pack and the Vintage Film, for instance, I felt the need to turn off the blur effect for some pictures, because the images looked like they had lost some of its sharpness/quality. Of course that if you’re going for a completely instant or vintage film look, then, these are perfect, since back then, cameras didn’t have the same end result as we get with digital cameras today.
You can clearly see here the blur effect completely blowing out the detail of the picture, but it’s something that you can easily turn off or change, so it’s not really an issue.
As you can see with the previous images, you could never tell this was not taken with the respective instant film. It’s that perfect.
There’s a pretty good range of different variations inside the same preset, so you also have plenty of different choices, like:
– Ilford Delta 100 – Alt
– Ilford Delta 100 – Faded +
– Ilford Delta 100 – Faded
– Ilford Delta 100 – HC
– Ilford Delta 100
These are all part of the RNI Black & White Film pack. And if that is not enough you have an (almost) infinite list of correction tools, where you can change the vignette, the fade, the contrast, etc.
We also get different ISOs for the same film as well, as you can see in the examples below, which is always useful.
My other favourite pack has to be RNI Negative Films. The tones are just beautiful — just look at that beauty.
With the Vintage Film I just love the melancholy one feels the second you lay your eyes on the transformed picture. Just like I mentioned with the Instant Film, you have a lot of variations with blur and frames, which does make the preset much more faithful to the original, but for me it just doesn’t do, so I just turn it off and ta-da!, instantly beautified photos!
All in all this is definitely *the* alternative to VSCO film packs. The only disadvantage I see here is that VSCO uses a range of different presets for different camera brands. For the average photo-taker, who just wants their photos to look good and pop instantly in an easy one-click-no-brainer way, this is absolutely the way to go.
Some of the RNI presets made their way to my top favourite list, without a doubt, so I’m definitely using this in the future.
Hope you guys liked the review and please check Real Nice Images packs, they’re worth it!
Have a great Sunday.
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