The effect was discovered independently by many different photographers often by mistake in the days of C-22 and E-4 . It has been used a lot for fashion advertising and band photography. Photoshop offers the chance to simulate the chemical cross processing process with the help of Curves Adjustment layer. This is a great effect that you can use to bring any photo to life also a good way to familiarize yourself better with the Curves Adjustment Layer.

There are two types of cross processing that we will illustrate today. The first is E-6 to C-41 and the second C-41 to E -6. So let’s begin with a photo of your choice. I am using this photo from my personal collection.

So open up your photo, go to the adjustments layer and choose Curves. Now perform these  settings:

And this should be the result :

If you are not completely satisfied with the result, you can always go back and play around with the settings. Now let’s try the C-41 to E- 6 version Again open up the Curves Adjustments Layer and perform the following settings :

And here is the final result :

This is a great effect for a retro look, although, I ussualy prefer to give an Overlay mode to the Curves layer .  It’s simply up to you  to experiment with different settings.

What is great about cross processing the result will also depend on the characteristics of  the photo you are using ( the amount of darks, the proportion between color) . So if you use a different photo you end up with a different result.  I’ll go a little extreme and use a this shall I call it almost black and white  photo from stock xchange .

Open it up and perform an E-6 to C- 41 Curves Adjustment. Only reduce the opacity lever to about 40%  . And you have taken the photo in a whole new direction.

You can save your settings for future use or you can download my set of presets.

Download presets:

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This is the end of this tutorial. Hope you find it useful and we will see you next time!