25 Tried and Tested Retro & Vintage Photoshop Actions. There’s an abundance of Photoshop actions available that allow you to quickly transform your photos with a retro or vintage effect, the problem is choosing the best actions from this vast collection.
Over 40 Photoshop actions were downloaded and tested to create this showcase of the best freely downloadable retro and vintage actions. It’s sometimes difficult to compare actions when they are all applied to different images, so I downloaded and tested each retro and vintage themed action on this generic photograph. Compare this original with the effects below to find your preferred Photoshop action. Don’t forget, if any of the previews look too vibrant or intense, you can always tone down the effect by applying it on a duplicate layer then reducing the opacity. How To Create a Retro Café Racer Motorcycle Ad Design. Follow this step by step tutorial to create a 1960′s style retro motorcycle ad for a modern café racer custom.
We’ll mock up the ad design using inspiration from original ad designs from the time period then use Photoshop to replicate the basic screen printing effect and textures to give the artwork an aged appearance. Our retro ad is based on the Triumph Thruxton 835 Type 1 Café Racer custom motorcycle by Gilsons. Photo Color Correction for the Amateur Photographer. I recently updated my avatars and social profiles with some new photos of the 2011 Chris Spooner.
I’m by no means a pro photographer, but the photos came out pretty well if I do say so myself! The key was all in the post processing and colour correction. Follow this step by step walkthrough of my editing process to see how I transformed my basic photos into bright and crisp profile shots. I’ve already mentioned that I’m by no means a pro photographer. The equipment I have is very basic, and the shots themselves are to be used for nothing more than online avatars and social profiles. First up we actually need to take a photograph. The raw photo file is nothing special at all. How To Give Your Photos a Vintage Polaroid Effect. Follow this step by step guide to giving your photos a cool vintage Polaroid style effect in Photoshop.
We’ll adjust the colours of the image with adjustment layers then use Photoshop brushes to distress the photograph for an aged appearance. The vintage effect we’ll be creating transforms your photos with faded colour casts, aged marks and a distressed Polaroid style border to frame the shot. Subtle additions of noise and various overlays all help to achieve that old-time look. Open up your chosen image in Photoshop. Here I’ve picked out a nice Summer shot of a group of friends on the beach from ThinkStock. How To Give Your Photos a Cool Retro Analog Effect. Back in the days of analog photography imperfections were part of the job.
Colour washes, light leaks, vignettes and blurs were all common problems that appeared during the processing of your film, particularly from cheap cameras such as the Holga, or simply down to human error. While these problems don’t affect digital cameras, we can recreate the cool effects in Photoshop to give our shots that cool lo-fi retro effect. View large scale photograph You don’t have to look far before finding quality examples of old style analog photography. Characteristics include inaccurate colour washes of warm tones, dark vignettes surrounding the shots, blurred focus and light leaks where the film has been excessively exposed.
Once you have your photograph of choice, fire up Adobe Photoshop. Handy Techniques for Cutting Out Hair in Photoshop. This post was originally published in 2009 The tips and techniques explained may be outdated.
When trimming out images in Photoshop, human hair or animal fur always proves troublesome and can be tricky to achieve a realistic look. Here are two techniques I use on images with both plain backgrounds, and those with a varied background tones, each achieving pretty decent end results. Technique One: Images with Plain Backgrounds The best photos are those professional studio type shots that are taken against a plain white background. These shots make it much easier to find the edges of the subject, but trimming out fine hairs can still be a little tricky. Design a Print Ready Business Card for Designers.
This post was originally published in 2008 The tips and techniques explained may be outdated.
Business cards are a useful resource for any business, for designers in particular it gives an opportunity to create something a little out of the ordinary and artistic to showcase their creative flair. Follow this walkthrough in Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator and Adobe InDesign to create your own double sided business card design, resulting in a print-ready file to send to your favoured print firm.
First of all, find yourself a printer to produce the cards. Although there are some common dimensions used throughout the industry, your printer might be different. Check the specs beforehand to ensure you send out artwork at the correct size and bleed. The print firm I use produces business cards at 88x55mm, with 3mm bleed. Start work by opening up Adobe Photoshop and creating a new document, remember our dimensions of 88x55mm with 3mm bleed?
Drag into the document and scale into shape. Create a Trendy Typographic Poster Design. This post was originally published in 2008 The tips and techniques explained may be outdated.
Using simple shapes can produce some great looking contemporary designs that fit well as impactful posters, a good example being the recent Trendy Geometric Lines tutorial. Photographers, Let Photoshop Do The Work. This post was originally published in 2008 The tips and techniques explained may be outdated.
Last year I wrote about a nifty little feature in Photoshop called Automate Batch, which can dramatically reduce your working times when adjusting large numbers of images or photos. Another of those useful options built right into Photoshop is the Contact Sheet generator. High Luminosity Range Photo Effect. This post was originally published in 2007 The tips and techniques explained may be outdated.
This simple effect in Photoshop effectively increases the luminosity range of an ordinary photograph, giving a wide spectrum of tones and contrast. The effect was originally discovered whilst I was trying to replicate the style of HDR photography in Adobe Photoshop. Whilst the outcome doesn’t quite compare to HDR, the resulting effect is still pretty cool! Open up your desired image in Adobe Photoshop, in this case I am using one of my photographs of a Waterskier. How To Give Your Photos a Dark Processed Lomo Effect.