Give footage a film-style look with Vintage and Halation

Clean digital footage can feel sharp and cold. Two filters in the Effects tab pull it toward the look of old film. Vintage changes the overall tone. Halation changes how bright spots glow. Both are single bars on the timeline, with one slider each.

1. What each filter doesVintage fades and warms a clip, and Halation gives bright highlights a soft glow. Here is what each does in the Effects tab and how to compare them on one clip without moving the bar.

Open Effects in the left panel and select Filters. The tiles show your own footage, taken from the frame under the playhead. Hover a tile to run its preview.

• Vintage warms the picture, softens the contrast, pulls back the color a little, fades the blacks, darkens the corners and adds a light grain. It reads as a photograph from another time.
• Halation finds the brightest parts of the frame and lets them bloom into a soft, warm glow in the exported video. The editor preview does not draw the bloom, so export a short test to judge it. Windows, lamps, headlights and bright skies pick it up. Evenly lit footage with no strong highlights shows very little change.

Each filter has one control, Amount. The default is 50, and the slider runs from 5 to 100.

Apply a look to a clip

1. Select the clip you want to style and park the playhead inside it.
2. In the Effects tab, select Filters.
3. Drag Vintage onto the clip. A teal bar named Vintage appears in the rows above the clips, covers that whole clip and is selected.
4. Look at the right panel. It shows the effect's name and the Amount slider. Drag the slider while the preview plays or sits on a frame, and stop where the look supports the footage without taking it over.
5. Play the clip from the start to check the look in motion.

Compare looks without starting over

With the bar still selected, click another tile in the Filters group, such as Halation or Pastel. The bar changes to that filter and keeps its position and length. Click Vintage again to go back. This lets you audition several looks on the same stretch in a few clicks, except Halation, whose bloom shows only in an exported test.

With no bar selected, a click on a tile marks it with a blue ring. Dragging a tile onto the timeline places it, so you can browse the Filters without changing your edit.

Pick the look for the footage

Match the look to what the footage already has:

• Use Vintage on home video, travel clips and anything meant to feel like a memory.
• Use Halation on night scenes, candle light, sunsets and windows, where there are bright sources to glow.
• Try Pastel when you want a lighter and flatter feel with softer color.

Keep Amount modest on faces. A strong Vintage setting pushes skin toward orange, and a strong Halation setting softens detail around bright areas.

Keep it consistent

A film-style look works best when it covers a whole scene. Drag the right handle of the bar over the following clips so one bar and one Amount cover the run. Shots that share a look feel like they came from one camera.

Captions sit above every effect, so their text stays clean and readable over your styled footage. A title lands below a new effect row by default and takes on the look, so drag its bar up above the effect row when you want it left alone.

To see the original footage again, click the small eye button on the bar. Its tooltip reads Disable clip.

Audition the looks

Put a clip from your next project into DepCut, drop Vintage on it, and click through the Filters tiles with the bar selected.Effects & Transitions,Creator Tips,