TikTokers Figured Out Taylor Swift's Signature Photo Filter Costs $800

Swifties can tell right away when a photo was taken by Taylor Swift because of a very specific millennial-coded filter she likes to use. Swift’s signature filter can be seen all over personal pics the Eras Tour singer has shared on Instagram of recording in the studio and partying on her birthday. Many fans have assumed this specific muted blue and yellow tone is something digital from an app that she applies to her photos before posting, but it turns out the Taylor Swift filter actually comes from a retro camera.

Back in 2022, when Swift was on The Tonight Show to promote her Midnights album, host Jimmy Fallon mentioned “a really cool camera” that she used to capture a photo at a pizza party the two were attending. TikToker @gabydeimeke found said camera — an Olympus OM-D E-M10. While it may look vintage, this mirrorless black and silver Olympus camera is digital and comes with preset filters. The “Vintage Art Filter 1” is apparently the one that Swift uses on all her photos, which gives them that hipster cool tone.

To replicate her exact signature photo filter, you’ll need at least $800. That’s how much the Olympus OM-D E-M10 is going for. The camera was first introduced in 2014, which was around the beginning of the first 1989 era and when Swift started posting her filtered photos on the ‘Gram. Apparently, when Swift purchased her Olympus, TikToker @gabydeimeke says the retail price around $2,000. So, in comparison, it’s a little more budget-friendly to buy it now, but it’s still a splurge.

The camera does come with some cool features, like built-in WiFi and Bluetooth so you can send your photos to your phone right away to post online. There’s also a video mode and you can switch out the lens, if you’re a serious photographer. If not, just stick with the 14-42mm EZ Lens it comes with — which is what Swift uses to capture all her squad group pics, candids of her new boyfriend, Travis Kelce, and of course, her cats. Of course, if you’d like to save your money altogether, one TikToker shared that you can just “shift the shadows of the image to a dark blue” in a free editing app to achieve a similar look.

For anyone who has Photoshop, @gabydeimeke showed how you can achieve this look by adding warm tones, boosting the yellow color. Then, use “Selective Color” to turn the yellow tone down a bit, which boosts the blue in your shadows. You can do some final adjustments with your color balance by bringing up the magenta and adding in some more yellow overall.

Taylor Swift’s Photo Filter Is A Millennial Aesthetic

Another commenter said, “It's funny [because] the filter just looks like the generic Insta filters from 2012.” In fact, you could just play around with the settings of IG’s free filters and boost the blue and yellow tones to get a Swift-like overlay on your photos. To test this out, I uploaded a recent photo of myself where I was trying to recreate the 1989 (Taylor’s Version) album cover with some seagulls in the background. After choosing my photo to post on Instagram, I selected the “Abu Dhabi” filter and adjusted it to around 73. Then, I went into the other adjustments and selected “Color” to boost the blues in my shadows, as well as “Warmth” to give the rest of the photo some yellow tones.

While I do think this works best with a photo taken with flash — which is Swift’s go-to — the end result was a Tay-inspired filtered photo that I probably would have posted to the ‘Gram in the early 2010s. Some fans have even joked that Swift’s use of the same filter from 2014 is very millennial of her, and the “Cruel Summer” singer isn’t ashamed of that. Swift recently stated in a caption promoting her Eras Tour movie that she’s proud to be a millennial, who uses photo filters and has an “excessive and literal” use of emojis. Even just bringing a digital camera to a party — like Swift did at the Kansas City Chiefs holiday party on Dec. 10 — is “so 2007” of her, according to one fan on TikTok, and we love that about her.