Kodachrome was discontinued in 2009, and I started too late with photography to ever shoot it. I shot everything else, Tri-X, Portra, Velvia, but I never shook the feeling that I'd missed my chance with Kodachrome 64. So I read everything I could find about color science and how digital cameras render color, and I tried to build the look myself. That was the start of the Classic K14 project. This is its third generation.
Classic K14 (2024) follows the palette and contrast of Kodachrome 25, 64 and 200, from the saturated golden age to the muted character of its final roll. There are 10 presets and 4 profiles, and they interpret more than the film stock. They also interpret the photographers who shaped how we remember it, Ernst Haas, Alex Webb and Steve McCurry:
- The Golden Era, the clean glow of post-war optimism
- The Last Roll, the moody elegance of McCurry's farewell roll
- The Ernst Haas Variant, color as metaphor
- The Alex Webb Variant, intensity, layering, complexity
Kodachrome was never one look. It was a language, and these presets are my attempt to speak it with modern tools. They work with any camera that shoots raw, including Lightroom Mobile.
Presets don't make images great. Photographers do.
This product will work with Adobe Lightroom CC (cloud based Version), CameraRAW (10.3 and above) and Classic CC (7.3 and above). To use them with Lightroom Mobile, you'll need a Lightroom CC or Classic CC running on Windows, or OS X.
Read the story behind Classic K14 (2024)
Sample pictures by: Maximilian Gödecke, Daniel Dittus, Phil Hoefer, Malte Grüner, André Duhme