» Simple Photoshop Sepia Effect Photoshop Tutorial- tutorial blog

Sometimes you want that yellowing-old-photograph look for your image, but the tired old plugins just aren’t working for you; everything looks like it was run through a filter instead of aged by the hands of time. Maybe you’re looking for a mix of the original colors and the fading past. Here’s a simple tutorial to help you find your way to just the right blend of old and new.

We will be starting off with this photo :

Which you can get from SXC.hu

1. Paste two copies of the same original image into a new composition.

2. Image -> Adjustments -> Desaturate both the layers :

3. Filter -> Blur -> Gaussian Blur… on the upper layer. Not much-a couple of pixels should be more than sufficient, unless you’re working with something very high-res.

4. Layer -> Layer Style -> Color Overlay… on the upper layer. Choose a suitable sepia brown/orange shade; Web color combination #DC8631 should do fine. Set the Blend Mode to Soft Light.

5. Set the blending mode of the layer itself to Soft Light. This will give you a final result of an image with a soft, golden-burnished glow.

6. In theory, you could be done here, but why not adjust to taste for a real old-fashioned photo feel? Select the lower layer, and use Image -> Adjustments -> Hue/Saturation… to take down the colors in the original. Reducing them by around 75 is suggested for the sepiatone effect, but experiment and see what works for you.

A few passes with this technique, and you’ll find that time travel is as easy as firing up Photoshop in the comfort of your own home. Ah, technology!