We’ve curated a collection of free light leaks here. Download free light leak footage and add a vintage look to your videos.
Light leaks are unique in ways they can change the tone and look of your footage. If you are looking for a quick way to make your video scenes more visually pleasant, these effects come in handy. Light leaks also help create rich movement in your videos. Whether it’s for Premiere Pro or any other NLE, download these free collections and use them in your projects.
Contents
What are light leaks?
Traditionally, light leaks happen when a roll of a film is exposed to light. Such a situation occurs when there is not enough light protection in the camera. Light leaks tend to be orange or red because of this exposure.
These days photographers and videographers turn his bad thing into an esthetic advantage. But high quality light leaks are not digitally produced effects. They are shot in-camera to get that organic look, which cannot be imitated too easily.
Creative ideas to use free light leaks
There are several clear use cases for light leaks. All of them are meant to add more organic elegance to your videos. You can set the tone and ambience to your video scenes. You can use light leaks as organic transitions between scenes. You can also use light leaks as luma matte transition.
Setting the ambience
This use of light leaks is very linear and straight-forward. By adding light leaks you give your footage a new more authentic look. By overlaying light leaks in your video scenes, you can get a new vintage look. Think about those slo-mo closeup videos with smiling people with light flickering. That’s light leaks in action.
Organic video transitions
Light leaks are great and more professional alternatives to the in-built transitions in your video editing app. Find a point of the greatest brightness in your video and set it as an IN point. Then drag the clip into your timeline at a transition point and drag out the In point to include the beginning of the transition. The light leak will then take up the entire frame with brightness.
Luma matte
Light leaks can serve as a powerful transition between two clips (in After Effects, and also in Premiere Pro). Here are the simplified steps:
- Set the Matte option to the video track with the Luma matte clip on it.
- Set Composite Using option to Matte Luma. This will allow to see your Luma Matte transition between the two clips.
Download free light leaks
We have done a bunch of research about the best free light leaks available out there. Let’s get started.
21 free light leaks from Rocketstock
To get the pack, sign up into the Rocketstock email list. Their emails are pretty regular and always to the point.
If you don’t want to receive any more emails, here is the direct link to the free light leaks from Rocketstock. The pack has an extra folder with 8 more bonus light leaks. A nice surprise!
16 free light leaks for wedding videos
The music site PremiumBeat has a valuable pack of free light leaks. Visit their wedding videography page and scroll all the way to the button to download completely free light leaks. Don’t just leave that wedding video page with the free light leaks in hand. Grab all the other freebies on that page.
16 free light leaks + 5 wedding titles
Give your video projects, esp. wedding videos, the elegant look they deserve with this free wedding titles and light leaks pack from RocketStock.
20 free light leaks from Vegasaur
This is old, but still good. This pack includes 20 free light leaks. But you need to be patient to download it. Also make sure you don’t click on all the ads that surround the “download” button not to be taken away from the site.
5 free light leak videos on Mixkit
You can also download 5 free video clips featuring light leaks on Mixkit.co.
21 free light leaks in Shutterstock’s video editor toolkit
You can download over 21 free light leak videos in this popular and free video editor toolkit on Shutterstock. The toolkit has several asset folders. The folder with Overlays has a separate one with these free high-quality light leaks.
15 free light leaks from Kolladigital
You can download these 15 light leaks for free. Just set the price to $0. But you can also give a small amount to the creator by raising the price to a couple of dollars. This pack also includes a free aerial video clip.
12 free God rays from PremiumBeat
Download this free pack which includes a dozen of free volumetric light rays in 4K. Use these free light overlays as you see fit in your edits.
17 free light leaks and lens flares
JD Perez is sharing his light leaks for free. Download these 17 video files from this Drive folder.
15 royalty-free light leaks in HD
You download this free pack with 15 light leaks on CreativeDojo.net. Just set the price to $0 and proceed to check out. All the video files are 1920×1080.
How to use light leaks
Using light leaks is extremely easy. Simply drag the light leaks over your video clip in the video editing app and set the blending mode to Screen or Add.
PREMIERE PRO: Select the video clip in your timeline and go to Effects. Select the dropdown next to Opacity. Click the dropdown menu next to Blend Mode and select Screen.
AFTER EFFECTS: Select the video clip in your composition. Then click the dropdown under Mode (if you don’t see Mode, click Toggle Switches/Modes at the bottom of the composition). Select Screen or Add. You need to place background footage under your light leak to see the change.
FCPX: Select the video clip in your timeline. Then click the inspector button to get to the video effects. Go to the bottom and, under Compositing, go to the Blend Mode menu. Change the blending mode to Screen.
How to make your own light leaks
If you want to experiment with light leaks and create a bunch of your own, check out this detailed tutorial.
This above tutorial is packed with good tips about how to create your own light leak footage. You will need a camera, a light source, and, probably a black screen. You can use the techniques from the video, but you can also try a different approach to capturing light leaks (where you remove the lens):
1) Remove the lens from your camera. You will expose the sensor, so don’t let anything to get in between it and the lens.
2) Turn your camera on and start recording video.
3) Move the lens (with the cap on) around the camera mount. This will produce light leaks on the camera’s display.
4) Angle your camera towards and away from the light source to get different light leak effects.
5) Experiment with the sun, ceiling lights, candles.
6) Experiment with objects moving gently in front of the camera.
These simple tools will help you create limitless variations of light leaks. Then you will need to download the footage from your camera and choose the best ones (matching what you need for your projects).
If you shoot light leaks in 4K, plan to have some more storage as the video files may be relatively large. Also, plan to make light leaks that you can reuse in other edits.
Need more free assets for your next video edit? Check out these free collections curated on our site.