Tutorials

Use Photoshop to Make Your New Photos Look Like Antiques

09/21/2001

In Photoshop, you can take a picture taken today and make it look like it was taken a hundred years ago.

1. Choose a picture you want to antique.

2. Select the entire image (Select>All) and send it to its own layer (Layer>New>Layer Via Cut).

3. Increase the canvas a bit (Image>Canvas Size) to give yourself about a quarter of an inch on the edges, which you will need later.

4. Select the layer that contains the image and go to the Hue/Saturation control (Image>Adjust>Hue/Saturation).

5. Choose Colorize at the bottom right of the dialog box. This will turn the image into a single hue. To give the image a sepia tone, make the Hue setting about 40 and the Saturation about 30.

6. Scan an old photograph that has a lot of damage such as tears and scratches.

7. Convert the scan to grayscale (Image>Mode>Grayscale).

8. Go to the Levels command (Image>Adjust>Levels).

9. Push the darks (left arrow) and the midtones (center arrow) toward the right to drop out all the details of the photo, leaving the light-colored scratches visible.

10. Using the Move tool, drag the image with the damage onto the first image. This will place it in its own layer, which we will call the damage layer.

11. Place the damage layer in Screen mode (Mode setting in the Layer's palette). This will make the scratches appear as if they were on the image.

12. Merge the damage layer with the image layer.

13. With the Lasso tool, make a rough selection where you would like the image to appear torn. Send it to its own layer (Layer>New>Layer Via Cut).

14. Rotate the layer with the tear slightly and move it away from the rest of the image.

15. In a new layer, select a rectangular shape to resemble a piece of tape and fill it with white. Put that layer in screen mode and reduce the opacity so that it looks like tape.