CCD

Before · AfterPlay with it

The sample with the Night Out preset. Drag to compare, or press Play with it to tune it live. Open as a shared look

What it's like

Think of a party photo from 2004. The flash blows out the faces nearest the camera, the lights behind glow into soft white blobs, and a lamp in the corner drags a faint stripe straight down the frame. Skies go cyan and white, the shadows crawl with blotchy color, and everything is a little too sharp in a way that looks digital. That imperfection is why people use it: it reads as a real moment someone was there for.

When to reach for it

• The Y2K and digicam look on any photo or clip. Start from the Y2K Digicam look, which pairs Flash with CCD.
• Night shots with lights in them. Smear and Bleed come alive around lamps, signs and headlights.
• Daylight snapshots with no flash. CCD Daylight keeps it cool and punchy.
• Pair it with Flash for the close-up flash look, and set Flash's Date stamp for the orange date in the corner.

How it works

CCD finds the bright parts of the picture. It blurs them into a glow that spreads into the darker areas around them, and adds a stripe down the full height of each bright column, the way a CCD leaks charge while it reads out. Then it shapes the picture like the camera's processing did. That means a short tonal range, cool color, sharpening that leaves halos, compression that settles flat areas into 8-pixel blocks, and noise that comes in chunky color blotches, worst in the shadows.

Controls

16 controls in 7 sections, in the order Tune shows them.

Highlights

• Hero knobBleed 0 to 100 · rests at 50

  The hero. How far bright areas bloom out into their surroundings.

• KnobThreshold 0 to 100 · rests at 60

  How bright something has to be before it blooms and smears.

• KnobSmear 0 to 100 · rests at 30

  The stripe a bright light pulls down its column, top to bottom.

• KnobPurple fringe 0 to 100 · rests at 25

  Purple edges where something bright meets something dark.

Color

• SelectColor NeutralCoolGreen-magentaTungsten

  The camera's color. Neutral, Cool (cyan skies, cool shadows), Green-magenta (green shadows, magenta highlights), or Tungsten (warm indoor light the camera never corrected).

• FaderSaturation -100 to +100 · rests at +20

  From flat to punchy.

• FaderWhite balance -100 to +100 · rests at 0

  Pushes the whole picture cooler or warmer.

Tone

• KnobShort range 0 to 100 · rests at 45

  How short the tonal range is. Higher crushes the shadows and clips the highlights sooner.

• KnobBlack lift 0 to 100 · rests at 15

  Raises the deepest blacks a little, like a cheap sensor.

Noise

• KnobNoise 0 to 100 · rests at 30

  Fine grain, a new pattern every frame.

• KnobColor noise 0 to 100 · rests at 35

  Blotchy color noise in the shadows.

Camera

• SelectSensor 2 MP3 MP5 MP8 MP

  The sensor size. 2 MP is softest, 8 MP is crisp.

• KnobSharpening 0 to 100 · rests at 35

  In-camera sharpening, with the halos it leaves on edges.

• KnobJPEG 0 to 100 · rests at 30

  Compression: flat areas settle into blocks and color goes coarse.

Mix

• KnobMix 0 to 100 · rests at 100

  How much of the CCD look shows over the picture.

Buttons

• Pulse buttonShutter Momentary · fires and falls back · can be recorded

  Press for the shutter: a quick dark blink and a flash of white.

Presets

8 presets. Each one opens in the studio as a shared look. Add it on top of your picture, or save it to My looks.