Category: Photography

How to Create a Vintage Photograph Using Photoshop

Below is the final result of creating a vintage photograph, and I’ll show you how to do it.

Here I have a photo that I took at a civil war reenactment last year. The photo looks nice in color, but I think taking the color out or making it sepia will make this photo more realistic:

The first thing I’ll do is make a duplicate layer by hitting CTRL+J on my keyboard. I’ll name this layer “Remove Color”. To name a layer, just double click on the word “Layer 1″. Then you can type in the name of your layer:

The next thing I’ll do is go to Image/Adjustments/Black & White:

Here, the Black and White dialog box comes up. I’ll move all the sliders to the left just a little to slightly darken the photo. Then I’ll click on the Tint check box. The settings I have for this photo are Reds – 12, Yellows – 23, Greens – 23, Cyans – 12, Blues – 10 and Magentas – 53. The Hue for the Tint is 42 and the Saturation is 20. Then I’ll click OK. Here’s what it looks like so far:

Now I’ll pick a greenish color from my swatches palette. When I click on the color I want, I’ll see it in the foreground of the color picker in the tool box:

Now I’ll make a copy of the “Remove Color” layer, and I’ll name it “Color Tint With Green”. Here are the layers so far:

Next I’ll pick the paint brush from the tools palette, and I’ll set the Mode to”Color” and the Opacity to 100%:

Now I’ll paint over the whole image with the paint brush. Then I’ll bring the Opacity of the layer down to 20%:

Here I’ll click on the “Remove Color” layer to select it, and hit CTRL+J on my keyboard to make a copy. I’ll name this layer “Noise”:

Now I’ll go to Filter/Noise/Add Noise:

When the Add Noise dialog box comes up, I’ll set the amount to 30%. I’ll keep the Distribution to “Uniform”, and I’ll check the Monochromatic check box. Then I’ll click OK:

I’ll set the Opacity of the “Noise” layer to 45%:

Now I’ll take the eraser tool and erase away some of the grain from the boys’ faces. I’ll set the eraser tool to 14% opacity:

Here’s the photo at this point:

The last thing I’m going to do is to give this photo a little vignette. I’ll go back to the “Color Tint With Green” layer, and I’ll use the burn tool to burn around the outer edge of the image. I’ll take my time and work at it slowly with a large feathered brush. Using the burn tool, I’ll keep the Range set to “Midtones”, and the Exposure set to around 20%. Here’s the finished photo:

How to Create a Grunge Photograph using Photoshop Raw

This tutorial was inspired by a video by Matt Kloskowski on the NAPP site.

Here is the starting photo, that I took at a riding competition in Bedford Hills, NY:

For this tutorial all I’ll need is a .jpg file. In Photoshop, go to File/Open As and click:

I’ll pick a .jpg file from this folder and I’ll make sure to open it as a “Raw” file, then I’ll click Open:

Here’s the Camera Raw dialog box before I start to make any changes:

What I’ll do here is bring the Exposure to +20, Recovery to 73, Fill Light to 75, Blacks to 15, Brightness to -9, Contrast to +80, Clarity to +80, Vibrance to +80, and I bring down the Saturation to -50.

Here’s what the image looks like at this point with these settings:

The next thing I’ll do is go to the HSL/Grayscale and click on Luminance. I’ll make the Reds -100, Orange 14, Yellow 18, Green -73, Aquas -94, Blue -60, Purple 11 and Magentas 23:

Here I’ll give the image a little vignetting to bring the focus onto the horse and rider. I’ll go to the Post Crop Vignetting and give the Amount a -30 and Roundness -60:

Here is the finished image:

Now I’m going to save this as a preset, so I’ll go to the Preset tab and then click on the New Preset icon:

I’ll name it “Grungy Look” and then check all the features I used while creating this look. Then I’ll click OK:

Here’s the preset ready to be used for another image:

Here I opened another image in camera raw. I’ll click on the preset icon and then I’ll double click the “Grungy Look” preset to add the effect:

The good thing about doing to this way is that, if I don’t like any specific part of the image, I can go back to the Basic tab and tweak it to my liking:

If you’re into this kind of grungy look, have a great time playing with this tutorial and remember every image is different. The settings I used might be different from the settings you’ll need. Experiment and play around with the sliders. If the first image doesn’t come out to your liking, just try a different image. Not all images take a liking to this effect.

Have fun!

Creating a Brush Preset Using a Photograph in Photoshop

Here is the type of brush I’ll show you how to create:

Here, I have a photograph that I took of a butterfly. I made a selection using the lasso tool around the butterfly, and put in onto its own background. I could have also just erased the background with the eraser tool in the tools palette. It’s important to have a white background because the background becomes transparent when I create the brush:

The eraser tool and the lasso tool are located in the tools bar:

Now I’ll make a selection around the image. The selection doesn’t have to be exact, as long as I get my entire butterfly in without clipping any of it:

Now I’ll go to Edit / Define Brush Preset:

Now the Brush Name dialog box comes up. In the box to the left you can see how the brush will look. Right now the box has named the brush “Sample Brush 1”. I’ll rename it to “butterfly”. Then I’ll click OK:

Now I’ll go to the brush tool in the tools bar, and click on the brush icon:

I’ll go to the menu bar at the top of the screen and drop down the brushes menu. The butterfly should be the last brush on the list:

Here is the brush. I could make it larger or smaller using the bracket keys { } on my keyboard:

Here is another example. I have a picture of a flower that I took in my studio:

I erased the background, but when I go to Edit / Define Brush Preset, it’s grayed out. The reason is that the file is too big:

What I have to do is make this file smaller. Here’s how. I’ll go to Image / Image Size:

Here the Image Size dialog box comes up. Here are the dimensions it shows for this image:

I’ll make the largest dimension width or height 1024. So, whichever number is the biggest, I’ll change to 1024. Then I’ll click OK:

Now I can see that the image is much smaller. I’ll make my selection around the flower, and now when I go to Edit / Define Brush Preset, it’s ready to use:

Here the brush is last in the brushes menu:

This is a fun way to create brushes. You can do this with any photograph. You can even create people brushes — close ups of faces. You can even create a brush of your favorite pet.

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial. Have fun playing with Photoshop! Here’s just one last example of my favorite pet:

How to Create a Fisheye Lens Effect Using Photoshop

Above is the result of this tutorial.

Here I have a photo of the Boston skyline, taken with a 18-200mm lens at 18mm:

The first thing I’ll do is select the elliptical marquee tool from the tool bar:

As I’m making my selection on the photograph, I’ll hold down the Shift key on my keyboard to keep the circle proportionally round. I’ll try to make the selection as big as I can without extending outside the photo. Then I’ll center it over the portion of the photo that I think is most interesting. While I’m centering the circle, I’ll make sure that I still have the elliptical marquee tool selected:

The next thing I’ll do is reverse the selection, so that I’m selecting everything in the photo except the circle so that I can get rid of the background. I’ll go to Select/Inverse:

Now I’ll hit the Delete key on my keyboard. The background will turn white:

Now I can use the move tool to center the circle:

Now I do the Select/Inverse again, because I want to make the background black:

I’ll use the paint bucket tool from the tool bar to fill the background black:

Now for the last time I’ll do a Select/Inverse:

The next step is to give the circle the fisheye look. Here I’ll go to Filter/Distort/Spherize:

Here the Spherize dialog box comes up. I’ll make the amount 100% and I’ll set the Mode to “Normal”:

I’ll hit CTRL-D on my keyboard to deselect. Then I’ll just crop out some extra black background.:

Here is the finished photo:

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial, and have fun playing with Photoshop.

How to Turn a Photograph Into a Cartoon Effect

Above is the result of this tutorial.

Here is a photograph of some flowers I took in my backyard:

The first thing I’ll do is go to Filter / Sketch / Photocopy:

When the Photocopy dialog box comes up, I’ll make the image viewable at 25% by clicking on the (-) at the left hand bottom part of the dialog box. This way I’ll be able to see the whole photo, not just part of it:

In this dialog box, I’ll take the Detail slider all the way to the right, which is 24, and I’ll bring the Darkness slider to about 20. Then I’ll click OK:

The next thing I’ll do is hit CTRL+J on my keyboard to make a duplicate copy of my background layer. I’ll name it “Flowers”. In the History palette I’ll also check the history marker next to the “Open” stage in the history palette.

This is what the palettes should look like at this point:

Next I’ll pick the history brush from the tool bar:

I’ll go to the menu bar at the top of the screen and change the mode from Normal to Multiply:

Using the history brush, I’ll start painting back the color of the flowers at 100% opacity. I’ll put the green background on another layer so that I can change the opacity separately. Using the multiply brush brings out any color cast that might be in the image, and exaggerates it. So, in the layers palette, I lower the opacity to 74%.

Here’s the image so far:

If you need to clean up any edges, you can use the eraser tool in the tool bar:

Here, I show the opacity lowered to 74%. Here’s the finished layers palette:

The good thing about being in multiply mode, is that with every paint stroke you can make the colors richer. I recommend using a soft brush when using this mode.

Here’s the “before” and “after” shots:

 

Try this out and experiment with different modes. They all do something unique.

Have fun!

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