Technique 45. Make it Old

Technique #45. Make it Old

This technique starts with a color tint (Technique #43) and adds to it to make the photo look old. As with many of the techniques, this one uses separate layers that can easily be copied to other photos.

key concepts:

adjustment layers

filters

blend modes

layers masks

Step One.	Follow the steps in Technique #43 to add a color tint to the photoa sepia kind of look lends itself well to the old-fashioned look. All the layers we'll add will be below the two adjustment layers.
Step Two.	Click on the Background layer and then click on the Create a New Layer icon at the bottom of the Layers palette to add a new layer above the Background layer. Fill it with white by pressing D to set your Foreground and Background colors to the default, then pressing Command-Delete (PC: Control-Backspace). From the Filter menu, choose Texture>Grain. Change the Grain Type to Vertical and put in high values (I used 92 for Intensity and 96 for Contrast).
Step Three.	Change the blend mode of the grain layer to Multiply to force the white areas to disappear. If the lines created by the filter are not to your liking, try re-applying the filter to the same layer.
Step Four.	To randomize the lines a little, click the Add Layer Mask icon at the bottom of the Layers palette to add a mask to the grain layer. From the Filter menu, choose Render>Clouds. Press Command-F (PC: Control-F) to create a different cloud pattern to mask the grain layer slightly differently.
Step Five.	Add a Levels adjustment layer and click-and-drag the white Input Levels slider to the left to over-brighten the photo. Click OK and then press Command-I (PC: Control-I) to Invert the layer mask and hide the effects of the Levels adjustment.
Step Six.	With white as the Foreground color and black as the Background color (press D to set these), click on the Gradient tool (G) and in the Options Bar, change to the Radial gradient (the second icon from the left). Press Return (PC: Enter) to bring up the Gradient Picker and choose the Foreground to Background gradient (in the top left). Press Return again to close the Picker. Change the tool's blend mode to Screen. Position the cursor close to one corner of the photo and then click-and-drag a short distance. Repeat in another corner (or other area) of the photo. As an optional step, you can experiment with applying filters to the layer mask, such as Artistic>Plastic Wrap, as shown here.
Step Seven.	Add a new layer and fill it with 50% gray (use Edit>Fill, where 50% Gray is a built-in option). From the Filter menu, choose Noise>Add Noise, turn on the Monochromatic checkbox and use a low setting. Change the blend mode of the noise layer to Hard Light.
Step Eight.	As we did in Step Four, add a layer mask to the noise layer and use the Filter>Render> Clouds command to randomize the visibility of the noise. One of the advantages of using separate layers is the option to select them all and drag them onto a different photoas long as the other photo is relatively close to the same size. Here's the result of clicking-and-dragging the layers used in this technique onto a second photo. Before After: The layer mask on the grain layer was disabled by Shift-clicking on it