Leica is bringing a new kind of filter effect called “Artist Looks” to its Lux camera app for iPhones, with the first one adjusting your photos to resemble the style and body of work of celebrity photographer Greg Williams.
Artist Looks, like the other color and black-and-white looks in Leica's app, are essentially one-click filter presets for easy photo editing. It's the first time Leica Camera has collaborated with a pro on looks designed to mimic their personal aesthetic. In Williams's case, his Artist Look is lightly inspired by Kodak Tri-X film, converting your color photos to black and white — with the white point shifted a touch to make the whites slightly off-white and yielding a more vintage warm-tone feel.
The Lux app is Leica's dedicated camera app for iPhones, allowing free and paid users to take smartphone pictures with a bit of Leica's color science. In addition to a selection of Leica-tuned photo filters like Classic, Chrome, and one based on the vintage Leica I Model A camera, the app also offers some signature looks taken from specific Leica lenses. The in-app “lenses” are essentially portrait mode processing recipes modeled after lenses like the 50mm f/1.2 Noctilux or a 35mm f/1.4 Summilux.
Leica is also releasing an update to its Fotos app that allows owners of the Leica Q3, Q3 43, SL3 and SL3-S to download the Greg Williams look directly into their cameras. And if you don't have one of those newer models, the Fotos app can apply the filter to JPG files shot with any Leica with Wi-Fi that can upload images to the app. There's no paywall for the Artist Look in the Fotos app, other than the barrier to entry of owning an actual Leica.
Photo filters and film recipes are nothing new to mobile photography or users of Fujifilm cameras. While Fujifilm leans on its own film stocks for reference in its popular X100 line, other camera-makers typically go the standard route (vivid, neutral, etc.) or get creative, like Panasonic's Lumix S9 camera and its many custom profiles. This new way of leaning on a pro photog's own style is certainly novel. It might be cool to see some iconic Leica photographers get their own Artist Look, if I'm ever strolling down the street and feeling a little Elliott Erwitt-y. Though, I imagine some pros may charge a pretty penny to cop their style.
