Get the retro photo effect in Photoshop

Retro is all the rage these days, and particularly the retro photo effect. Just because you shoot with a digital camera, though, doesn’t mean you can’t still get this lovely vintage film effect in your images.

Our original image

In the quick Photoshop tutorial below we show you how you can get the retro photo effect in 4 easy steps.

Step 1: Curves Adjustment Layer
Click on the Create new fill or Adjustment Layer icon at the bottom of the Layers Panel. To add some contrast, apply a slight S-curve to the main RGB curve by dragging the top right of the curve up, then the bottom left of the curve down.

Step 2: Adjust colour curves
Now choose the Red channel from the drop-down menu, and apply a similar S-curve to the RGB channel. Select the Green channel and do the same. Select the Blue channel, but this time, apply a reverse curve by dragging the top right down and the bottom left up, then close the Curves adjustment window.

Step 3: Add a cool tone
Click on the Create new fill or Adjustment Layer in the Tools Panel, and then select the Photo Filter option. In the Filter drop-down, select Cyan to give the image a cooler tone, and then change the Density to 10%. Finally, from the Create new fill or Adjustment Layer, choose Hue/Saturation.

Step 4: Adjust the colours
In Master channel of the Hue/Saturation adjustment window, drag Saturation slider to -20 to reduce overall saturation. Select Red from the drop-down and drag Saturation to -10, select Green and set to -20 Saturation and finally +10 Saturation in the Blue channel.

Our final version

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 7th, 2012 at 7:00 am and is filed under Tutorials. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a comment. Pinging is currently not allowed.