The seven secrets of RETRO PHOTOS
Once you’ve made old photos look like new, it’s time to give your new pics a vintage makeover
In this age of flawless digital imaging, there’s something irresistible about analogue effects that hark back to the days when imperfection was all part of the charm. This idea has caught on. The 2012 $1billion acquisition of Instagram by Facebook was just one indication of the popularity of the old-school look. It seems that everybody wants their images to look like they were taken with an old Polaroid then left in a shoebox for 30 years! These effects can be created in Photoshop, but, of course, this begs the question: why bother when you can get a free app that does all the work for you? Well, besides the fact that Photoshop is far more powerful, it also offers almost limitless variety and control over the end product that can’t be matched by a simple smartphone app.
In this feature we’ll dissect and analyse the different effects that make up this popular analogue look.
1 Creative colour
The chemicals used to create colour prints are sensitive to light, moisture and temperature changes. After time, this inevitably leads to colour shifts and fading. We can recreate these colour shifts by using Curves Adjustment Layers. A drag up on the curve line will lighten the image or chosen channel at a specific point in the tonal range (represented by the X axis). Add more points along the line to tweak individual tonal ranges such as the shadows (to the left of the line) or the highlights (to the right). Target different colour channels by choosing them from the RGB drop-down menu. Here, we’ve dragged down on the red and blue channels to introduce cyan and yellow into our image.
You can experiment with all manner of different combinations to get a huge variety of results.
For example, the various colour treatments of our 51 photographs on the previous page can all be made with Curves adjustments.
2 Light leaks
Light leaks occurred in traditional film photography when a gap in the body of a camera unintentionally let light reach the film. As the film was rolled up, leaks typically affected the edges of the frame at the top and bottom. We can replicate the light leak look with a Curves Adjustment Layer. Click the Create Adjustment Layer icon and choose Curves, then select the Red channel and drag a point on the curve right up. Next, go to the Blue channel and drag a point right down. Press
Ctrl/Cmd+I to invert the mask on the Curves layer and hide the effect, then grab the Brush tool and paint with white to reveal the orange light leak effect around the edges. Experiment with different rough-looking brushes and lower the tool’s Opacity to make your brush strokes less uniform.
3 Texture
After a couple of decades, old prints will begin to deteriorate. Humidity and moisture brings fungus growth, handling leads to scratches and folds, dust and grime accumulates on the surface and excessive sunlight causes cracks. We can recreate the effects of time by combining texture with our digital images.
There are good-quality high-res textures you can get cheaply or for free, and it’s easy to go out and shoot more yourself. Copy in a suitable texture image then experiment with different Blend Modes to combine it with the layers below. Each Blend Mode in Photoshop will behave differently and in ways that are often difficult to predict, so it’s a good idea to scroll through different modes, either with your mouse wheel or with the keyboard shortcuts Shift + or Shift
– until you get the look you want. Overlay, Soft Light, Color Burn and Multiply can work well in a lot of situations, so start with these.
Don’t forget you can fine-tune the texture with the Layer Opacity slider if you want to make the effect less intense, and add a Layer Mask then paint with black to make it work more selectively over the image.
4 Blur
Irregular blur around the edge of a frame is typical of old budget lenses, where optical quality was somewhat limited. Photoshop has an array of blur filters that can mimic this look. Before applying blur, depending on what you’ve done already, you may need to combine several layers into one. If so, highlight the top layer and use the shortcut
Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+Alt+E to merge a copy. Right-click the layer and choose Convert to Smart Object. Next, go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur and set a Radius of about 10px (although the strength will vary depending on the resolution of your image). Once applied, make a circular selection with the Elliptical Marquee tool then right-click, choose Feather and set a high radius of 50-100px. Finally, Alt-click the Add Layer Mask icon to hide the blur in the selected area so that the corners are soft and the centre is sharp.