Vintage tone/texture - possible with digital?

I downloaded Virtual Photographer a long time ago but I recall it only works on 32 bit operating systems, not 64 bit. I think it's still that way so it probably won't work on your laptop either.

kfreels wrote in post #16765913
The especially nice thing about photoshop are all the free tutorials out there to show you how to do things. Being the industry standard has some advantages. The less common a program, the less stuff like this you'll find.

Right you are. I haven't looked lately but in the past I have watched a lot of videos on youtube,watching the guys do some amazing things. So I expect to be spending a little time there learning some things.

navydoc wrote in post #16765928
I downloaded Virtual Photographer a long time ago but I recall it only works on 32 bit operating systems, not 64 bit. I think it's still that way so it probably won't work on your laptop either.

I will give it a spin - nothing ventured,nothing gained. Worst case scenario it wont work as you say.

I don't like this look personally, but it is easily doable with digital

think about it, film scans are in fact digital, everything you see online are digital, every colour palette/every pattern/every effect

you can even paint one out of single pixels although that will take years

This looked very interesting to me. All types of vintage film looks. A little pricey for me mostly because I don't know which pack to pick. Lightroom is very reasonable for what it offers. You get LR try one of these.

http://vsco.co/film

Actually if you did decided to get Lightroom there are so many free presets out there that give you vintage looks, etc it is hard to keep tack of them.

Just went as grabbed a few out of the hundreds of free LR presets I have.

Yesteryear

Apparently, there a free version of Adobe CS2 available - instructions here

I know its an old version but it does a lot of cool stuff and will run fine on Vista.

Theres a free plugin from fotomatic that does B/W old school type transformations.

Here's something I developed a couple of years ago for my first fully themed photoshoot.
I did a conversion in Lightroom using the red filter preset (I think) then developed a Photoshop action to further the antique effect. I've lost the action (it's on my old HDD somewhere) but if I remember correctly, it did the following:
- Adjust the levels: compress the dynamic range, then lift the blacks just a little bit (maybe to 10 or 15?) and darken the whites (down to around 240 or 245?)
- Box blur just a little bit - remember those old lenses weren't very sharp, tripods weren't very sturdy, and they usually needed a long exposure. Box blur seemed to produce the most believable effect, but YMMV.
- Add a vignette - could have done this in Lightroom, in retrospect, but not sure how that would affect the Levels adjustment.
- Add a color layer for sepia, pink, or blue toning. Not all old photos were sepia toned; they would use a variety of colors for different scenes and needs.


My lighting, framing, and composition are much better now :P

IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com …/nathancarter/6​729041693/

IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com …/nathancarter/6​717306107/

IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com …/nathancarter/6​717412713/

IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com …/nathancarter/6​717306677/

in order to understand "antique" it helps to understand the processes that produced imagery and the effects of age on these processes. much can be done in photoshop with simple filters. In your first image a sepia filter is applied to a b/w image. to reproduce a vintage color desaturate the color and introduce aging with some color shifts. it's not hard but you do have to spend the time necessary to understand what you are trying to achieve and the tools to make that happen.

Thanks guys for showing your work. Nathan,your guy chained to the chair looks really good. Not a critique of your work,but in looking at yours and mine and the others here,and comparing them to a couple videos I watched I know what Im missing more than anything else - dirty,gritty paper. Seems the shadows,tints and things of that nature are not that difficult. But the vintage dirty paper is going to be a challange....atleast until I get a grasp of PS.

jetcode,you are 100% right. I understood before attempting this endeaver that the time period photogs Im trying to mimic had all maner of evil to contend with. No point in listing anything here,we already know.

I dont expect to 'duplicate' the look,but I really want to get as close as I can. As I work on this I will post pics for critique and recomendations. I really do appreciate the input and direction!!

ItsJustEd wrote in post #16771532
Thanks guys for showing your work. Nathan,your guy chained to the chair looks really good. Not a critique of your work,but in looking at yours and mine and the others here,and comparing them to a couple videos I watched I know what Im missing more than anything else - dirty,gritty paper. Seems the shadows,tints and things of that nature are not that difficult. But the vintage dirty paper is going to be a challange....atleast until I get a grasp of PS.

Agreed, that was something that is perhaps missing from those. At the time, I wasn't really considering it, as I was going for silent-film look, not just old-print look.

Adding a dirty-paper texture is really not that hard, even with only basic knowledge of Photoshop. You've gotta know how to use layers, that's about it. The tricks are:

1) Find an existing (free) texture that you like - don't try to make one yourself. There are zillions of them out there if you spend a little time googling around. I also like to use DeviantArt for free stock resources such as textures & brushes - for this, it's a little easier than google, I think.
http://www.deviantart.​com/resources/
http://www.deviantart.​com …&order=9&q=pape​r&offset=0
Search for terms like "grunge" and "texture" and "paper" and "vintage" - whatever you think will work.
(check the notes from each artist for licensing; most are free for personal use but not commercial use.


2) In Photoshop, put the paper texture on a layer over your photo, transform/stretch it out to cover your whole image, and change the Blend mode to something that you like. Multiply is a good one for something like this. Change Opacity down a little, if needed.
If you want to go a little deeper, you can also adjust the texture with a Hue/Sat adjustment layer, or a Curves or Levels adjustment layer - if you do these, make sure these are clipping to your paper texture layer only.

I can't link directly to them right now, but if you click through to my Flickr, there's a recent set of 12 pulp-novel covers where I used an old-paper texture layer to give some interest & texture the cover. In retrospect, I'm not really happy with the spine crease, and maybe I should have added a little more weathering/wear around the very edges of the image.


[edit] I don't have any advice on how to do something like this with only DPP and PhotoMatix. I've never used Photomatix, no idea what its capabilities are.

nathancarter wrote in post #16772563
Agreed, that was something that is perhaps missing from those. At the time, I wasn't really considering it, as I was going for silent-film look, not just old-print look.

Adding a dirty-paper texture is really not that hard, even with only basic knowledge of Photoshop. You've gotta know how to use layers, that's about it. The tricks are:

1) Find an existing (free) texture that you like - don't try to make one yourself. There are zillions of them out there if you spend a little time googling around. I also like to use DeviantArt for free stock resources such as textures & brushes - for this, it's a little easier than google, I think.
http://www.deviantart.​com/resources/
http://www.deviantart.​com …&order=9&q=pape​r&offset=0
Search for terms like "grunge" and "texture" and "paper" and "vintage" - whatever you think will work.
(check the notes from each artist for licensing; most are free for personal use but not commercial use.


2) In Photoshop, put the paper texture on a layer over your photo, transform/stretch it out to cover your whole image, and change the Blend mode to something that you like. Multiply is a good one for something like this. Change Opacity down a little, if needed.
If you want to go a little deeper, you can also adjust the texture with a Hue/Sat adjustment layer, or a Curves or Levels adjustment layer - if you do these, make sure these are clipping to your paper texture layer only.

I can't link directly to them right now, but if you click through to my Flickr, there's a recent set of 12 pulp-novel covers where I used an old-paper texture layer to give some interest & texture the cover. In retrospect, I'm not really happy with the spine crease, and maybe I should have added a little more weathering/wear around the very edges of the image.


[edit] I don't have any advice on how to do something like this with only DPP and PhotoMatix. I've never used Photomatix, no idea what its capabilities are.

Nathan my man,thanks for the help!! Really appreciate you going out of your way to throw good information my way. Im going to be quite busy over the next few weeks learning some vintage techniques. The links are very helpful! Also,I successfully downloaded an older,free version of PS (thanks to your link) that I expect to learn a lot from and have high hopes of making serious progress with my vintage endeavor. By the way,DPP and Photo Matix just dont have the tools to do vintage - nice black/white,but not true vintage. My plan is to watch more youtube tuts and find one person who is good at the style,not too fast with instruction (getting old sucks,lol) and is detailed. Then I will be off and running!

Thanks again!!

edit - forgot to mention. Personally,I like the spline edges. Gives it a natural,actual book appearence. Looks good.

So,I played around this weekend. Here is my 1st true attempt at this - before and after. What do you think? Personally,I love it!! Im excited about learning more with layers,tints,shades and all that other stuff that goes with this type of photography. But for now Im a happy camper

IMAGE LINK: https://www.flickr.com …77024467@N03/13​361286485/

IMAGE LINK: https://www.flickr.com …77024467@N03/13​361383233/