How to Make Digital Look Like Film Without Killing Detail

Highlight control in Lightroom is where a clean edit either holds together or falls apart. If skies keep turning chalky or faces get shiny fast, the fix is often less about contrast and more about what you do with the brightest tones.

Coming to you from Samuel Elkins, this practical video keeps the focus on highlights, not as an afterthought, but as the backbone of a consistent look. Elkins talks about the kind of soft, muted highlight roll-off people associate with film scans, then shows how to aim for a similar feel without turning everything gray. You see why a highlight that is technically “not blown” can still look harsh, and why chasing clarity or global contrast first usually makes the sky worse. When Elkins references the look of scans from a Mamiya 7 and compares it to what you can pull from a modern sensor like the Fujifilm GFX100 II, the point is not nostalgia, it’s control.

The interesting part is the order of operations. Instead of treating highlights like a single slider problem, Elkins splits the job across the tone curve and the basic panel so you shape the bright end rather than just pushing it down. He leans on the point curve for the “bloom” effect, then uses the parametric curve to keep detail usable, which is a different mindset than “add contrast until it looks good.” You also get a clear warning: it’s easy to overdo highlight bloom and make skin look strange, so you’re watching for the edge where softness turns into fog. The video keeps coming back to consistency across lighting, not a one-off edit that only works in perfect conditions.

Where this gets real is in how you shoot. Elkins argues for exposing to protect highlight detail, even if that means the file looks a little darker at first, because you can lift shadows later with modern cameras. That runs against the habit of overexposing to “save” the dark areas, and it changes what your files can tolerate once you start pushing curves. He points out a simple test you can do while shooting in directional sun: pay attention to the exact moment highlights start to feel too bright, then back off before they cross that line. Later, inside Lightroom, he adds a linear gradient to tame the top of the frame and keep the bright areas from pulling attention, then fine-tunes the curve to keep the transition natural. Check out the video above for the full rundown from Elkins.