Give Your Phone Photos a Warm, Dreamy Analog Film Look With These 3 Tricks

The nostalgic film look of the photos has become very popular on social media in the last few years. That is the answer generative AI fakes or whether warm pastel tones and realistic film grain are in vogue is unclear. But while many photographers — myself included — have turned to Kodak roll-loaded analog cameras, you can get those dreamy film vibes using just your phone.

And the best part is, you don’t even need to have the latest iPhone or Android phone, or special camera apps. The goal is to get a more retro, old-school feel from your photos rather than the clinical precision offered by many of today’s phone cameras or even digital compact cameras. So it’s not about having a phone with the most megapixels or the best features.

You can edit your photos with little more than a default camera app and a few minutes in a free editing app. Let’s dive in and shoot.

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Taking pictures of yourself

While most of today’s phone cameras can take bright, well-exposed photos, they all rely on an image processing app to compress their very small image sensors. Unfortunately, it’s not always done well, as most phones over-produce, resulting in fake-looking images with unnatural-looking highlights and shadows and wrinkled details.

This process aims to strip away some of that excess digital blur and HDR toning to produce an image that feels closer to what you might expect to find from a real film camera. There’s a lot you can do to help that.

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The first method goes back to traditional photography: use an optical filter in front of the camera lens. Specifically, a fog filter can soften harsh details while adding a natural ‘bloom’ to highlights, which can add to the filmic vibe we’re trying to achieve.

I use fog filters on a lot of my photos, mostly CineGold filter for PolarProwhich adds a warm glow to images, and CineBlack which subtly deepens the shadows while adding a bold bloom. I use these with my Leica Q3 43 but they work just as well on your phone — you just need an adapter like Mounting Moment’s QuickLock filter that lets you slap any 63mm series image filter on your phone. PolarPro makes filters especially the iPhone (seen above) but my advice would be to buy regular round filters that you can use on any phone or camera.

Moment also makes a variety of lenses that you can attach to your phone and I love the effect it gives, too. While they are visually sharp, they add some natural degradation (including softening some harsh details and optical imperfections) to the image that also helps reduce that overly sharp digital look.

I often shoot using ProRaw on iPhone or raw DNG on most Android phones to give me a lot of flexibility in editing (and a lot of bypassing of the auto focus that most phones will run in auto mode), but you can get better results by using the default settings on your camera.

I find that I get the best results when I am slowly overexpose the image (usually by tapping and raising the exposure slider). Many film stocks — including Kodak Gold and Portra 400 — generally look their best when shot in bright outdoor scenes (think a California beach or an alpine mountaintop under a bright sky) so relying on a bright look when taking your photo can be helpful when you’re in the editing stage. And by shooting in green, there’s enough dynamic range to work with so I don’t white out the highlights of the image.

Otherwise it’s up to you to take a good photo that you want to give a good film art. Remember to focus on capturing a good image at the time, instead of just snapping and hoping to pull off something usable later using editing. If you’re serious about taking your phone photography skills to the next level, I’ve got a tutorial for you.

Using your phone’s built-in presets

Most phones offer presets that change the look of your photos. Apple’s Photo Styles on the latest iPhones allow you to change the colors and saturation of your photos before and after you take them. If you just want to play with colors in your photos then it’s a good start but I’m not saying any of them look like analog film. (And Picture Styles only work if you’re shooting in HEIF or JPEG, not ProRaw.)

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Samsung’s My Filter tool lets you steal color tones from other photos. Although I sometimes find the results a bit underwhelming, I’ve had some success with it, especially when I use the built-in editing tools on top of this to add film grain and adjust colors further.

Other phones — including the Xiaomi 15 Ultra again OnePlus 15 — and come up with a variety of looks baked into the phone. It’s not really worth trying, although most of my success in creating a film look comes from editing apps rather than the phone itself.

Edit your phone photos to look like a movie

When I edit, I’m not trying to emulate a specific film stock like Kodak Gold or CineStill 800T. Instead, I’m just trying to achieve what feels like a classic film aesthetic.

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There are many apps on the iOS app store and Google Play store that offer various movie simulations and vintage effects. Personally, I haven’t found many that I really like but some are worth highlighting.

First up is VSCO, which has a long history of producing film styles that the company says are based on real film stock. I’ve been using VSCO’s desktop presets for years and they’re definitely one of the best, so if you’re looking for a quick way to slap a filmy look on top of your photography, VSCO is worth a look — although you’ll need to pay a subscription to access the entire collection.

Next up is Adobe Lightroom, which remains a staple of the photography industry and works just as well on phones as it does on desktop computers. While you can edit your photos in an infinite number of ways to create the look you want, to save some time there are many presets available to install that will give you quick access to great colors with just one tap.

Moment has its own store full of preset packs that can be used in Lightroom, bringing film vibes to photos taken with your phone or any digital camera. It can be a pricey add-on but worth a try if you take your photography seriously. The aforementioned VSCO recently released its Lightroom filmic preset pack, which is available to all paid subscribers to download and install. I’ve used them and while they’re designed to work with ‘regular’ cameras from Canon, Leica etc., I’ve still had great results when using them on ProRaw iPhone photos, including the phone photo above.

But my personal suggestion, especially if you don’t want to shell out any money, is to use Google’s Snapseed app. It’s free on Android and iOS, and has advanced photo editing tools, including many film looks, some of which are specifically aimed at mimicking real film stock. I like to swipe through the looks, testing each one to see how it feels on my image before applying it.

I’ll also use a large amount of grain to simulate the natural grain seen on analog film, which also helps reduce digital sharpness. I’m also going to go into the Details tool and bring down the texture and make sure the sharpening is set to 0. Other things in Snapseed that can add effect are using the Dehaze tool to reduce sharpness, the Adjustment tool to reduce Ambience and add a touch of blur with the Lens Blur tool.

I like using Snapseed, because I can go back to different tools and set the result again and again, resulting in an image with a color style that is uniquely my own. It’s one of the best photo editors out there and surprisingly, it’s free.

Editing this way comes down to what I feel are the right ‘vibes’ rather than being color matched to how Kodak or Fujifilm render different colors. It’s all about personal preference here so I encourage you to play around a lot to find what looks best to you.