Photoshop: create sepia and vintage effects

This practical tip shows you how to create great sepia and vintage effects with Photoshop to give your photos an authentic retro look.

Make photos with sepia and vintage effects look old

In order to make your photos look really old in the truest sense of the word, we use Photoshop to simulate a coarser grain of the photo paper and the typical sepia tint that old photos take over time. Finally, we create a vignette to make the result appear even more authentic. That's how it works:

Open the photo you want to apply the effect to in Photoshop.
At the bottom of the Layers palette, click the second icon from the right to create a new layer.
Use the fill tool to fill your new layer with an approximately 50 percent shade of gray.
In the "Filter" menu under "Noise filter" select "Add noise".
Depending on your taste, set a strength of ten to 20 percent in the dialog window. The higher the value, the rougher your photo will be later. Select an even distribution, make sure that the "monochromatic" check mark is set and confirm with OK.
Select the layer mode "Copy into one another" in the layer palette - your photo now has a nice grain.
In order to conjure up the sepia effect on your photo, select the "New setting level" item in the "Layer" menu and then "Black and white ..." Confirm with OK that you really want to insert a new setting level.
Then go back to the »Level« menu to add another setting level. This time select "Photo filter ..." and confirm again with OK.
You will now find the filter properties above the layer window. Click on the "Sepia filter" in the drop-down menu and set a density of 100 percent. Make sure that the "Preserve luminance" check box is set.
To make the vintage look even more authentic, we are now adding a vignette. To do this, create a new layer at the top of your layer stack and fill it with black.
Drag a selection over your image using the Selection Elipse tool. Leave a small distance from the edges. In the "Selection" menu, select "Invert selection".
Insert a layer mask by clicking the third icon from the left at the bottom of the layer palette.
In the "Properties" panel, move the "Soft edges" slider to the right until you have reached the desired vignette thickness.

This practical tip was done in Photoshop CS6. Instead of a vignette, you can also add a nice frame to your photo.