sephia look in after FX

[David Braswell]

I don’t think there’s a special sepia filter built into AE, but you can recreate the sepia look by desaturating your photo layer (Effect–>Adjust–>Hue/Saturation). In other words, turn it black and white. Next, place a solid color layer above the photo. Choose a warm, brownish-gold color. Make it fairly saturated because you’ll blend it with the photo beneath it. Click on the switches/mode button in the timeline and experiment with the transfer mode of the solid color. Overlay, color dodge, and soft light should give some nice results. Change the intensity of the effect by changing transparency of the color layer.

To make it easier to adjust the solid layer color, you can apply the “Fill” filter. It defaults to red, but will easily allow you to tweak your final color settings.

[Ryan Hill]

You might be able to match more precisely with levels. Grab a photo you want to imitate, and write down the RGB values of the lightest area, darkest area, and the mid-tone. Apply a levels effect to your layer and adjust the output values and the mid-range input level to match your recorded values.