How to Make Your Photos Appear Antique

In this tutorial I'm going to teach you how to make your photos seem like they were taken with an antique camera. This technique is neat and can be used for a wide variety of purposes.





Step One

To save some time we're going to start with an image that has already been sepia toned. This is easy and is covered here in this tutorial.

Step Two

Next we're going to add a little lens blur around the outside of our photo. We do this by entering Quick Mask Mode by clicking on this button here:

Now, grab your Gradient Fill Tool which you'll find by clicking and holding on the Paint Bucket Tool. For this technique we're going to be using the Radial Gradiant, this is the circular gradient which you can find near the top of your screen. Click somewhere in the center of the photo and drag out to the edges. You should now have a red gradient covering your photo like this:

Now, exit the Quick Mask Mode by clicking the same button you used to enter it. You should now see a circular scrolling selection marquee over you photo. To get the right kind of blur we're going to use a filter called "Lens Blur" which you can find by going to Filters>Blur>Lens Blur. Here are the settings I used for this picture although you may find different settings work better for yours.

Click "OK" and your result should look a bit like this:

Step Three

Now, your photo should still have it's selection marquee, if not just go to Select>Reselect. We're going to use this to add a little darkness around the edges. Create a new layer and set it to "Multiply", grab your Paint Bucket Tool and dump some dark brown onto the blank layer. When you're done, go to Layers>Flatten Image and you should end up with something like this:

We're almost done!!

Step Four

It still looks just a little too dark and we want a striking, high contrast image so we're going to bring out some of the highlights and we're going to use "Curves" to do this. You can find the Curves by going to Image>Adjustments>Curves, here is the settings I used for this image but, again, you may want to play with them a bit:

Click "OK" and you should end up with something like this:

It's starting to look pretty good isn't it? We just have one more step to go!

Step Five

Now all we want to do is add some vignetting around the edges. Go to Layer>Duplicate Layer. We're going to use a layer style for this effect so click the little "FX" symbol at the bottom of your Layers Window, the one we want to use is "Inner Shadow". Here are the settings I used:

Click "OK" and we're all done!

You can use this technique on pretty much any photo, you can even add some grunge and scratches to make it look like an old beat up photo. I hope this tutorial was helpful, if you have any questions just ask. Thanks for stopping by!!