Play around with the curves to get what you are looking for.

If you would like to create your own, the images below are the curves effect that I used. These presets are for Premiere Pro (CC or above). And, like always, I’ve provided the presets for you to download and use for free. I have a few presets that I use when I want to achieve this effect. As you can see in the examples above, the man’s face is at the same level in both images. The great thing about the “Hipster Fade” is that it usually doesn’t effect the skin tones much at all. This effect is very similar to simply lowering the contrast, but it has slightly different characteristics because It basically crunches the dynamic range of the image by bringing up the shadows and bringing down the highlights while still preserving the original contrast. The whites in the image are brought down very slightly. With “The Hipster” fade applied, his pants get brought up a bit with all the shadows in the image. The opposite happens with the highlights.

In the original image, his black pants are very dark. You can see this effect happen with the man in the background. Instead of the black level being set all the way down to 0, the hipster fade brings the black level up to about 10 or 20. The effect is very subtle, but it gives the blacks a sort of ‘milky’ or ‘creamy’ look. I usually refer to it as “The Hipster Fade.” We see it all the time on social media and commercials. Yes, it’s overused, but it looks pretty cool.

In recent years, a color grading trend has been set that can best be described as a slight luminance fade resembling an Instagram filter.

Download premiere fade to black