Nostalgic Negative preset for Lightroom & Sony Alpha
Nostalgic Negative is built on American new-colour photography of the seventies: amber shadows, faded lifted blacks, golden skin and a general sense of a print left in a drawer for forty years. Warm without being orange, faded without losing structure.
How to shoot and edit it
- Golden hour and tungsten interiors are its home ground.
- The lifted blacks do the nostalgia work — don't restore them in post.
- Skin renders golden; if faces go too far toward orange, pull orange saturation, not the temperature.
The measured values
Decoded from the genuine Nostalgic Neg profile. These are the slider equivalent — what it takes to reach this look without a colour profile. The .xmp you generate in the tool embeds the measured profile itself, so it needs far less on top.
Lightroom Classic
Light
Color
Presence
HSL / Color mixer
Tone curve
Color grading
Detail & effects
Grain
Sony Alpha — Creative Look
Adjustments
D-Range Optimizer
IN base with A2.5 WB shift and Saturation +9 creates the warm amber-faded look. LUT shows R>G>B throughout all tonal ranges.
Sony Alpha — Picture Profile
Main Settings
Black Gamma
Knee
Color
Color Depth
Detail
CORRECTED: was crushing blacks (BL -1, BG -2) but Nostalgic Neg has FADED LIFTED blacks (LUT Shadows +20, Blacks +12) — black level +2 and wide black gamma +2 give the milky faded toe. Warm amber gradient (LUT R>G>B everywhere) via Color Phase +2, R+3, Y+3, B-2. Pro matrix keeps the muted nostalgic palette; shadows stay warmer than Classic Neg.
Related looks
Gold 200 is the drugstore film that turned into an aesthetic: a golden overall cast, punchy yellows and reds, shadows that lean slightly green, and blacks that never quite reach black. Cheap film chemistry became a look people now deliberately buy.
The last hour before sunset, amplified: amber highlights, glowing skin, soft lifted blacks and just enough haze to feel like the light is physically in the frame. Warm without tipping into orange, soft without going flat.
The understated travel and lifestyle palette: saturation pulled back everywhere, colour steered toward terracotta and olive, shadows kept warm, skin left natural. Quiet enough to work across a whole feed without any single frame shouting.
Make your own version of Nostalgic Negative preset
Adjust the description, add a reference photo, or import a preset you already own — Preset Lab returns the Lightroom values and the in-camera settings together.
Open the generator