Create a Retro Photo and Background
In this tutorial we are going to take a regular, boring photo and liven it up using with some effects to give it more of a retro feel to it. We are then going to take the photo and create a background for it to lie on.
Step 1
Grab the photo we are going to use, and open it up in Photoshop. Now we are going to do some quick retouching on the photo, so first we are going to straighten it the horizon line. Click and hold down the eyedropper tool in the tool bar and click on the ruler tool. Click and drag a line following the lines in the water, then go to image>rotate canvas>arbitrary. Crop out the white edges.
Step 2
Now do control + L to bring up the levels and adjust them to something like what I have, keeping in mind that you don’t want to lose the details in the house.
Step 3
We want to get our photo to have a color balance that is off, like how older photos are. So we are going to make our photo overly red. To do this we are going to go into the color balance with control + b. Change your settings to something like I have below.
Step 4
Now open up your hue/saturation with control + u. Change the settings like I have them.
Step 5
Next we are going to give a gradient to the image, this is going to give us some darker contrast and wash out the photo a little more. So create a new layer with control + shift + n. Click on your gradient tool and choose the orange to blue gradient. Click and drag the gradient from the top of the document to bottom so the orange is on the top and the blue is on the bottom. Change the blend mode to Soft Light, and the opacity to 20%.
Step 6
Now we are going to darken the edges. Click on the square marquee tool and change the feather to 100px. Click and drag a square across the entire image, then do control + shift + i to get the inverse. Fill the area with black. Change the blend mode to overlay.
Step 7
Now we are going to give this image a border. Create a new layer and select the square marquee tool again. Change the feather back down to 0px. Now click and drag a square around the entire image. Go to Edit>Stroke, and change the color to an off white and the stroke to 20px.
Step 8
That is our retro image, but we can take this one step further. Since this is an old photo why not make it look stained too. Download the top left image on this page and bring into our document. Rotate and re size the texture with control + t, so that it fits the entire image. Change the blend mode to linear burn.
Step 9
Now we want to get rid of the dark part of the texture, so we just have just the stains. Open up the curves with control + m and adjust it so there is no black, something like what I have.
Step 10
Lets keep going with this image and add a background. Go ahead and download this image and bring it into a new 1680×1050 document.
Step 11
Go into your levels, control + L and hue/saturation, control + u and change your settings to like what I have below.
Step 12
Go back to our photo, do control + shift + e to merge all the visible layers, then drag it into the new document and resize and angle it.
Step 13
Click on the gradient tool, choose the radial gradient, (with the color #F9EECC) click and drag from the top left corner towards the middle of the document. Change the blend mode to overlay. Drag the gradient below the photo layer.
Step 14
Now we are going to give a shadow and gradient overlay to the photo. Click on the circle with the F at the bottom of the layers palette and change the settings to something like I have.
Final
There you have it, a retro looking photo, plus a whole lot more.
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nice tutorial thanks for sharing
Congrats! very cool!
Cool tut!
nice helpful retro bg tutorial, thanks..
superppppppppppppppppppppp
hello…
ala ln mgawuah…
love it!thx!
Very nice! I think it’s funny how many years ago before technology was advanced, people would try to have their photos look as new as possible, now since we can, we play around with styles and making photos look old. It’s just a bit of irony :)
hey i am quite confuse in step 8.. Could you please help me?
Thanks for the step by step tutorial of image tinkering.This makes the notion “old is still gold” very true. Will look forward to other tutorials as well.
Wow awsome tut thx m8
@salll — sure, what part don’t you get?
Very interesting!!!!
Congratualtion
Wow. I’m super excited to try this when I get home tonight! Great post!
wow – this is awesome, nice tutorial!
Wow, I’m very impressed with this tutorial! Clean cut, and very helpful. Bravo!
Thank you, I made this by (almost) following your instructions using Fireworks:
http://twitpic.com/3pnyz
Nice, that came out good. It goes well with the photo too.
Wow. I created this only looking at your screenshots and it looks amazing. What do you think? (Resized to half it’s original for internet)
http://mywebsite.bigpond.com/jnrobo/outback%20copy.jpg
Looks good! I’m glad that the screen shots illustrate the tutorial enough that you can just follow along with those
Nice tutorial thanks
Nice tutorial but too much shadows behind the photo :P
i want to photo backgrounds
A really professional bit of photo retouching
nice retouching skill~~
love it~
thx 4 sharing
Hi, interesting post. I have been thinking about this issue,so thanks for sharing. I will certainly be coming back to your blog.
good work… thanks for sharing
Hey Bro !!!!
That’s was really SuperB!!!!
It helped me a lot, keep up the good work !!!
I’m having some trouble with step 8.
How do I open the picture of marble (or any picture) as a new layer in photoshop cs4?
@Ariella You can open it up in Photoshop and drag it into your document. When you bring it in, it will automatically put it on a new layer.
drag it in?
it won’t let me drag it in…
You can bring layers from document to document by clicking on the layer and then click and drag it into your document.
My result: http://twitpic.com/5ir9w
thanx for cool tut, I live in a rural bush area so will scan some textures from the wild and give this a go, cheers!
Very nice. I didn’t know you could do that w/ the ruler tool!
Suggestion: in places like Step 4, where you say “Change the settings like I have them.” – it’d help a lot if you say *why* we do that, so we can understand how to use it in future :)
I can explain why I change certain settings, thanks for the input!
i have a trouble at step 13, how can i choose the f9eecc color?
If you look in step 7, at the bottom left of the color picker there is F4E9D3. Change that to the F9EECC, and that should give you the color.
I love this! I’m a Photoshop beginner, and I depend on talented designers like you to walk me through with tutorials…you do wonderful work!
Awesome tutorial.. :)
fantastic tutorial. thank you
Help! I keep getting hung up on step 8. I successfully pulled this off earlier today, but can’t duplicate the same proceedure now. I’ve downloaded and opened the background and it’s the same size as my photo, but when I drag it over to my photo it appears only half as big. I can’t figure out why it’s doing that now?
Stycktx:
You might have used a photo that was bigger than the texture was. If you want to shrink down your original photo to something smaller than 2900x2300px then it will work.
If you don’t know how to do this, you can go into Image>Image Size. In the top two boxes you can change those numbers to the 2900×2300 (These numbers are probably bigger on your photo.) If you can’t select them, make sure that resample image at the bottom of the window is selected.
Im stuck at 8, how do I get the “olde-paper-thing” to “vanish” into the picture ?
Newb:
Change the blend mode (the drop down menu at the top of the layers palette) to linear burn, then open up the curves with control + m and move the curve up like I have in step 9. This should fix the texture so it vanishes more.
I made this for a U2 fan friend of mine using your very user-friendly tutorial.
http://i26.photobucket.com/albums/c118/regularfrankiefan315/U2/PS%20U2/RetroU2Wallpaper.jpg
Jessie:
Nice, looks good!
Wow, just the tut I was looking for.
More learning completed. Thank you.
excellent design tips and tricks.
great tutorial thank you!
finally found a great tutorial on this!
Hello,
i dont know which paper do you use exactly.
You wrote: top left.But i am sure its not.
Could you write the name insted of the instruction
I went on the website that the texture came from and I couldn’t find it anywhere, the website changed a lot of stuff around.
These two textures will give you similar results though:
http://www.unsigneddesign.com/zenpaper/IMG_2052.JPG
http://www.unsigneddesign.com/zenpaper/IMG_2060.JPG
!!!nice tutorial thank you! i made this love it
http://img190.imageshack.us/img190/875/wallpaperbygrace4rjje.jpg
thank you for the tutorial
Great tutorial. Thanks
[...] 29. Create a Retro Photo and Background [...]
awesome tutorial. will pass along!
Thanks for a well-made tutorial! I followed it as close as I could, although I used GIMP. Here’s what I ended up with:
http://ernstsorin.jalbum.net/Blandat
love it…thanks for sharing…
Excellent design tips and tricks.
I need a retro theme for my college project, thanks
excellent tutorial. thanks!
great tutorial, great post…thanks for share this
İ did not understand the step 8. How do you bring that photo you download into the document? How do you change the blend mode ?
excellent…thanks so much
Sweetness! Great article.
I’d so love to see photos shot with this one, retouched like this.
http://www.jonaskroyer.com/photography/photoref/archives/1049
Nice tutorial !
Your step-by-step guides’re quite easy to understand & follow.
Eager to read other posts on your site.
Jimmy
I am stuck on step 13. When I do the gradient it comes up solid, rather than looking like light as yours does. I also don’t know what you mean by “drag the gradient below the photo layer”.
Thanks!
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