Photoshop - Sky Captain Movie Photo Effect

In this Photoshop tutorial I’ll be explaining how to duplicate the effect you see all throughout the movie “Sky Captain And The World Of Tomorrow.” The whole film has a monotonous feel, with faux film-grain and glamorous softening throughout. Giving it a gritty but yet surprisingly plastic aesthetic that I haven’t seen in any other movie so far, excluding the movie “Sin City” which came close.

Step 1

Start off by finding a picture you’re wanting to add this effect to and open it or add it into an existing Photoshop document.

Step 2

Duplicate the picture layer then select the newly duplicated layer and go to Filters>Blur>Gaussian blur, The formula I used is 1.0 of gaussian blur per 100 pixels of image, So 500×500 is 5.0 Gaussian blur.

Step 3

Set the Layer mode on the duplicated layer to ‘Overlay’ for a Harder more saturated image, Or ‘Soft Light’ for the opposite.

Step 4

Select the original picture layer and Open the Hue & Saturation (CTRL + U).

Start turning down the saturation bar,

Until you get it to where it looks about right.

It should be fairly low on the bar, because the image should get most of its color from the duplicated layer.

Step 5

Duplicate the Blurred layer and go to Filter>Noise>Add Noise. Drag the bar all the way to the right, Make sure Monochromatic is checked and then click OK. Now set this Layer’s Layer mode to Soft Light and drop the Opacity down to about 10%.