How to get a vintage look to your photos with Photoshop? As we all know, vintage photography is very fashionable. As we have already told you here on other occasions, we have countless applications on our smartphones to simulate vintage, retro or analog photographs. But have you tried to achieve those kinds of effects with your photos in Photoshop? Here we explain three very simple ways on how to get a retro look in just a few minutes you can give your images the lomographic, analog or vintage look you are looking for.
How to get a vintage look to your photos with Photoshop?
Create a simple lomographic effect
For a few years lomography has become fashionable. Lomography is a trend based on recovering Russian Lomo 35mm compact and automatic cameras that were used during the eighties. If we do not have a lomographic camera and we want to achieve a lomo effect in our photographs, we can perform the following steps in Photoshop:
Step 1. Choose color
We open our image. The first thing we are going to do is go to the toolbar on our left. We look for the Color Picker at the bottom and choose a deep red color.
Step 2. Create a gradient
Once this is done, we create a Fill or Adjustment Layer. In our case we will choose a fill layer of Gradient. A small menu appears with the characteristics of our gradient. As we had previously chosen a red color, we observe that we get a default gradient that includes red. We select in the gradient tab one that goes from red to transparent. In the angle it will appear by default 90 degrees and we will change it to -90º so as to invert it completely.
Step 3. Merge layers (Screen)
Once this gradient layer is created, the next step is to merge both layers. Our photography and the gradient. To do this, in the Layers menu on our right, we choose the Screen blending mode and lower the opacity to 65%. With this we would achieve a lomographic effect on our photo. We have chosen a red tone but obviously you can try other types of colors.
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Vintage effect
To achieve a vintage or time-worn photography effect in our photos, we just have to follow these simple steps:
Step 1. Uniform color
We open our image. We select and create an adjustment or fill layer. The layer that we are going to create is a uniform color. We chose an intense blue color with which we will completely cover our image.
Step 2. Layer blending modes (Exclusion)
Once this is done, we will proceed to merge both layers. For them we will go to our layer panel that is located at the bottom right of our screen. We will select the Exclusion option in the fusion drop-down tab and lower the opacity of the layer to soften the effect until we reach the point that we create optimal.
Step 3. Add noise
Once the fusion of our two layers is done. We can add a noise filter to our image to bring more analog feel to the photograph. To do this, simply go to our top menu and select the Filters option. Once there, several options are displayed, we look for Noise> Add noise and select the percentage that seems appropriate to us. With values between 7% and 10% we will give our photography a very interesting retro look. How to get a retro look with photoshop, follow these steps:
Retro textured effect
How to get a vintage look with a retro textured effect? To get a retro effect we can also use textures with our photos. Here we bring you an example of how to use them:
Step 1. Place texture
We open our photo. Next, we select File> Place embedded element and we select the photo of the texture that we have chosen and that we have saved in our team. For this, paper textures work very well. Once the texture has been placed on our image, we select the layer blending options and choose Overlay and lower the opacity to 65%.
Step 2. Photo filter
The next step is to add a photo filter. To do this we will create a new adjustment or fill layer, in this case Photo Filter. We will choose an intense yellow color and a density of 25%.
Step 3. Light effect (brush)
Our next step will be to add a light effect. To do this, we create a new layer that we place above the others. We go to our tools menu on the left and select the Brush tool. Previously in the Color Picker, we selected the white color that we will use for the brush.
We must choose a hard brush in Normal mode and whose Opacity and Flow are 100%. We chose a size that occupies a good part of the center of our photography.
Step 4. Blur (brush)
Once this is done, the next step is to blur our brush. To do this we will go to the top menu Filters> Blur> Gaussian blur. We chose a blur radius of about 140 pixels.
Step 5. Merge layers (Soft light)
Once we have defocused our brush, we can only merge this new layer to achieve a smooth light effect in our photography. To do this, we will go to our layers menu in the lower right area of our screen and, for this occasion, we select the Soft light fusion option from the drop-down menu. Once this is done, we can finish our photo retouching and we will have managed to give our photography a retro touch with texture as if it were an old and somewhat worn photograph.
There are many more ways to achieve, thanks to Photoshop, a retro or vintage effect in our photos. These are just three examples for how to get a vintage look that you can try and that are done in just a few minutes. As always, you can try it out since the options that the program gives us are almost endless and you can always find tricks and actions that give your photographs very interesting effects.
