was looking at some old photos of Kate bush, Stevie Nicks, and some other celebrities photoshoots from that time period and admiring the glowy affect or the purple and red colour palette on the photos wondering how I can achieve that same effect and then I realized that they did not have online editing software or even internet but the photos still look very nice and not like raw images I usually see. This may be a dumb question, I am not a photographer and do not know much about all this stuff but I am just curious.
The Hasselblad/Zeiss Softar filters where interesting and useful. they were well produced glass filters that had an array of dimples on the surface that would bend light over the dimple but the non-dimpled areas remained unchanged. The result was a soft glow around an otherwise sharp image. There were 3 levels, I still have a Softar 1. never wanted the 2 or 3.
There were/are also black dot and black mesh filters that can soften without losing as much contrast.