Most of us probably spend our time trying to make old photos new again – so, I thought it would make a nice change if we took a new photo and made it old.

All of the settings will be relevant to the start image 800 x 585 @72 dpi.

You can practise on the image below if you like, copyright is mine etc.,

Duplicate the layer and then bring up a Hue/Sat adjustment layer by clicking on the ying yang symbol at the bottom of the layers palette. Check the Colorize box and you can use the same settings I have if you like. Hue 25 – Sat 25 – Lightness 0. Merge the Hue Sat layer down. We are going to make the standard white border that comes with old photos. Use the rectangular marquee tool to draw inside the photo, use Shift + Ctrl + i to invert the selection, then fill it with white. You may end up with something similar to the image below.

Working on the newly adjusted layer, hold down the Alt key and click on the new layer icon at the bottom of the layers palette. When the dialogue box appears, check the box that says ‘Use previous layer to create clipping mask’ leave all the other things as is. Go to Edit>Fill and you can use the same colour as I have if you want *EECE93* Fill the layer with the colour. Add a layer mask to this layer by clicking on the ‘add layer mask’ icon at the bottom of the layers palette – click on the mask to make sure it is active, then go to Filter>Render>Clouds. Go to Image>Adjustments>Levels and you can punch in the same numbers I have if you like.

You can take the opacity of the layer down to about 15% if you like – you will be able to adjust it later (the joys of adjustment layers)

Hold down the Alt key and click on the new layer icon at the bottom of the layers palette and check the ‘use previous layer to create clipping mask’ again. Go to Edit>Fill and you can use the same colour I have if you like *C1A467* Add a layer mask to this layer and then go to Filter>Render>Clouds, then go to Image>Adjustments>Levels – use some different numbers this time – mine were

50 – 0.50 – 225 I took the opacity of the layer down to 50%.

Go to the ‘create new fill or adjustment layer’ at the bottom of the layers palette and choose Pattern from the menu. You may have to load the Rock Textures if they aren’t already there, and then choose ‘Textured Tile’ from those patterns and lower the scale to 60%, change the blend mode of the layer to Linear Burn and take the opacity down to 25%

Hold down the alt key and click on the create new layer icon at the bottom of the layers palette. Check the ‘Use previous layer as clipping mask, change the blend mode to soft light and check the ‘Fill with soft light neutral color (50% gray). Go to Filter>Noise>Add Noise and you can use the same settings as I have below.

Hold down the Alt key and click on the new layer icon at the bottom of the layers palette. Check the ‘Use previous layer as clipping mask’ and click OK. Grab the pencil tool, and with the f/ground set to black, draw some squiggles around the image. Switch the f/ground colour to white and do the same thing. Then take the opacity of the layer down to about 20%

You can now go through and adjust the layers to suit if you like. I’ve added a curves adjustment layer to mine. You are going to do a ’stamp visible’ so, making sure the top most layer is active press Ctrl + Shift + Alt + E and all the layers will be stamped onto one layer.

You could go and look for some coffee stain brushes on the net if you’d like to add that to the image as well. The image still needs the mandatory fold line in it though, so lets go ahead and add one of those.

Make sure the top most layer is active, then click on the ‘create new layer’ icon at the bottom of the layers palette. Grab the rectangular marquee tool and draw out a selection from the top to about half way down the image. Make sure the f/ground colour is white and select the gradient tool. Use a f/ground to transparent linear gradient and referencing the image below apply the gradient.

Go to Select>Inverse and then create a new layer, switch the f/ground to black and using the gradient tool do the same as before except start outside the selection from the centre of the image. Deselect. You should have something similar to the image below.

Merge the two layers together, then press Ctrl + i on the keyboard to inverse. You can take the layer opacity down to about 40%, or whatever suits. Below is the final image and then a comparison image in the next post. Have fun.

The Orton Effect is named after Michael Orton who first used the technique and is a sandwich of two images, one in focus the other out of focus. With the advent of Digital Photography and Image editing programs, the Orton Effect has been done for years in various ways, but it does come down to the right image and personal taste.
What you will be doing is very similar to THIS tutorial. It should also be easily done in Elements, PSP, The Gimp etc., I can’t remember where I first saw this done, but it has been around for a couple of years, and others have either expanded it or taken away from it.

You can practise on the image below if you like, copyright is mine etc.,

For this to work on other images, the image should have any adjustments needed already done – including being sharpened i.e. print ready.

Open the image, duplicate it and close the original. Double click on the layer to unlock it and when the dialogue box appears, rename the layer *Original* Now you are going to add a levels adjustment layer, you could use a curves adjustment layer if you wanted – either way, you are using an adjustment layer so that you have the ability to go back and change the settings later if you feel like it. Add a levels adjustment layer by clicking on the little ying yang symbol at the bottom of the layers palette. Slide the middle slider to the left till it reads 1.35 see image below.

Click on the b/ground (original) layer and duplicate it using the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + J and then repeat again. Name the middle layer Multiply and the top layer Blur. Click on the levels adjustment layer and repeat the same process i.e. you should have 3 adjustment layers. Drag the adjustment layers down till you have one image, one adjustment layer see image below.

Next you are going to Clip each of the adjustment layers with the image layer below. Click on one of the adjustment layers to make it active and use the keyboard shortcut
Ctrl + Alt + G to Create Clipping Mask. See image below.

Click on the Blur layer and then go to Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur I entered an amount of 5 pixels and then took the opacity of the layer down to 60%. Click on the Multiply layer and change the blend mode to Multiply and I took the opacity of the layer down to 65%. If you have any part of the image that you would like to stay sharp, add a layer mask to the blur layer and brush them back in. I added a layer mask and brought back the eye and the black thing on the Rosella’s beak. See image below.

I’ve added a Hue/Sat layer at the top of the stack and boosted the Master by 10, I then inverted the layer mask Ctrl + i and used a soft edged brush to paint back in the bird. You can go through and adjust anthing you want, and you may end up with something similar to the final image below – and then the comparison image. Have fun

So lets look at a couple more techniques you can use for colour correction (fixing colour casts etc.,) in Photoshop. You can probably use both of these methods in any image editing software btw.

Neither of these techniques will work on *all* images, but because they are so quick to do, they are usally worth taking the 20 seconds to try them out.

The start image is brought to us by Orbán Ferenc over at the Stock Exchange site.

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Open the image in Photoshop and then grab the rectangular marquee tool. You are going to make a selection that includes a lot of different tones in the image. Reference the image below to see where I made my selection.

Open a levels adjustment layer by clicking on the little ying yang symbol at the bottom of the layers palette and choosing levels. Where the dialogue box opens, go to *options* at the right hand side of the dialogue box and make sure *enhance per channel contrast* is selected.

Click OK to accept that and then press Auto – and you should end up with something similar to the image below.

So that looks a little strange Hold down the shift key on the keyboard and click on the mask – and there you have a quick colour correction.

On to the next quick colour correction

Open the image again and add a new blank layer above the b/ground layer by clicking on the ‘create new layer’ icon at the bottom of the layers palette. Grab the eyedropper tool by pressing *i* on the keyboard or using the side toolbar. You can reference the image below as to where I selected the colour from in the image, or, the RGB colours are 142 – 127 – 93.

Fill the blank layer with that colour. Press Ctrl + i on the keyboard to invert the colour and then change the blend mode of the layer to overlay and you can take the opacity of the layer down if you like – I adjusted mine to 75%. If the colours appear a little washed out, you could also add a hue/sat adjustment layer and boost the colours a little. You could also try a soft light or colour blend mode. If you use a colour blend mode you might have to take the opacity of the layer down to about 20% (or to your taste) On the image below I used a hue/sat adjustment layer to boost the master by 15%, then I added a levels adjustment layer and brought the sliders in on RGB channels.

Have fun!