Turn your Digital Photo into a Cool Aged Image in Photoshop

This journal entry was posted by Erik Ford 2 years, 135 days ago.

I want to show you a quick and easy way to take your digital photographs and turn them into an aged work of art in Adobe Photoshop. All you will need is your own photo, a working knowledge of Blend Modes and an aged paper texture.

Finished Product

In 4 steps, here is what we are going to achieve in this tutorial. I created a variation of this for our avatars.

Step 1: Set up your document

Before you begin, your will need to download this free stock image of aged parchment paper. Once you’ve gotten your stock image, let’s get to work by creating a new document. Set the width to 525 pixels and the height to 420 pixels. Change the resolution to 72 ppi (if you intend on creating this for print, use 300 ppi and whichever dimensions suit your needs.).

Step 2: Distressing the paper texture

Open up the stock image. This is already a nicely scanned piece of old parchment paper, but I want to bring out some of the detail. Let’s start by quickly resizing the image by choosing Image » Image Size from the top drop down menu. Making sure the proportions are locked, change the height to 525 pixels. The width should automatically change to 423 pixels.

Now, let’s adjust the Levels of this image by hitting Command + L (on a Mac) and dragging the left slider to 45. Be sure to have Preview selected so you can make you own adjustments, if need be.

Now, hit Command + A (to select the entire image) and Command + C (to copy the image) and head over to the new document you create. Make a new layer and call it “Paper”. Hit Command + V (paste the image into the layer). This will paste a copy of the parchment paper in the center of our document.

The paper is obviously scanned horizontally and our document is set up in landscape, so we need to adjust this. With the “Paper” layer selected, hit Command + T to bring up the Free Transform Tool. Right click anywhere inside the bounding box and select Rotate 90° CW. Hit enter to complete the transform.

Hit V to select the Move Tool. While holding your Shift key, move the paper until it snaps into place inside your document. If the paper does not snap into place, make sure you have Snap and Show » Smart Guides selected from the View drop down menu.

This looks good, but still want more of an aged distress look to this paper. With the “Paper” layer selected, click and hold your mouse and drag the layer over Create a new layer option to make an exact copy above the layer. Select the “Paper” layer copy and bring up the Transform Tool once again. This time, Rotate 180° and hit enter. Change the Blending Mode of this layer to Overlay and set the Opacity to 35%. Your paper should now be nice and dingy with a hint of yellowing.

Step 3: Prepare your photo

You can use whatever photo you like. Just make sure the image is in focus with as much detail as possible or the end results can vary. I am using a picture of my partner, David. The first thing I want to do is make a copy of the Background Layer and then turn that layer off. You should never apply effects to the original source image.

I want to remove the background and have a nice clean selection around him. You can use whatever method you are comfortable with the cut something out of a picture, but I will be using the trusty Pen Tool for this step. Hit P to bring up the Pen Tool. Make sure you have Paths selected as your option and trace around your image. Once you have a nice path around your image, Right Click anywhere in the Path and select Make Selection. Make sure Feature is set to zero and Anti-Alias is selected This should produce a clean selection around your image like this.

Once you are satisfied with your selection, hit the Delete key to remove the background. I now have a version of David on a transparent background.

Go ahead an desaturate the image by selecting Image » Adjustment » Desaturate. This image of David is a little dark for what I want to achieve, so I will adjust the Brightness. This step is to taste depending on your source image.

Step 4: Use blend modes to distress your photo

Make a copy of your photo (Command + C) and head back over to the main document. Create a new layer above “Paper copy” and name it “Photo”. Paste (Command + V) your photo into this layer. Change the Blend Mode to Color Burn.

Make a copy of the “Photo” layer and change the Blend Mode to Multiply. Lower the Opacity to 40%. Make one more copy of this layer and change the Blend Mode to Soft Light and the Opacity to 50%. Here is what I have so far.

This looks good as is but I will add some subtle details that are optional. I will use some brushes of water stains to weather the paper even more. The rest is really up to your imagination.