How To Make Scary Photographs For Halloween

Halloween is almost here, and it’s time to get spooky.

If you need scary photos for your newsletter, website, cards or any other reason, you can easily make them yourself. All it takes is your photographs, and some free presets.

First, select photographs that fit a Halloween theme, like stark nature scenes, old buildings or cemeteries. Once you have several images selected, you can apply various presets for whatever photo manipulation software you use. I manipulate these images in Lightroom 5.

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I photographed this dead tree in Flagstaff, near Snowbowl.

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For this look I used OnOne Vintage Sepia Film Grain and Vignette 5 Extreme. I then darkened the image with the clarity slider.

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This is a picture of a fence around one of the graves at the Hogback Cemetery in Jerome.

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This was made using Lightrooms Black and White, then the Sepia Tone presets. I then applied OnOne Vignette 5 Extreme preset.

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This is a dead Ponderosa Pine tree near Flagstaff’s Snowbowl.

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For this look, I first used the Shadow and the Black sliders to make the image look like a silhouette. Then I applied OnOne Glow-Glow Subtle Portrait, then adjusted the shadow slider to bring back the silhouette look. The preset lightened the tree more than I wanted.

Play around with your images, or take some new images to use for your Halloween projects. It’s a lot of fun, and there are tons of free presets to use.

Check here for presets.

Have Fun,
Jeff