This is a Photoshop tutorial on how to make your photos looks like they were taken 50 years ago. The essential thing to do here is applying sepia toning on your photo, so that it looks like picture from the old days with shaded brown on it. Besides that, we’ll also be using brushes to produce some aging effect on the photo.

Step 1:

Open your picture and make sure that your image is editable by using the Rectangular Marquee Tool, choose part or whole image, at top of the toolbar, choose Edit > Copy while your chosen image is still highlighted.

Then, go to File > New >Click OK > Edit > Paste it on a new page to make the image editable, now save your work as PSD file. Go to File > Save As.. > Put any file name, i.e makepicold, make sure the file format you’re saving is .PSD. Click Save and OK.

Now with your saved image still open, choose Image > Adjustments > Desaturate

Now you see that the image has turns into black and white mode only. The image is still in RGB mode and we are now ready to add some sepia toning on it.

Step 2:

Next, setting up your foreground color with the color of your choice. In this tutorial, I’ll be using the ‘Pale Cool Brown’ color to make shade of brown on the image for sepia toning purpose. Remember, you can use any color you like.

Step 3:

Now, create a new layer and fill it with the color you picked on step 2. Tip: Quick fill by pressing Alt + Del. Make sure that the new layer is on top of your image layer. Then, change the blending mode of the new layer to Color mode and watch the image changes into the shade brown version (Sepia Tone).

Step 4:

Now it’s time to add some filters on the image for aging effect. First, create another new layer and place it above the brown sepia layer you made on step 3. with your foreground color still the same as earlier, set the background color to white just like this . Make sure the new layer is selected and go to Filter > Render > Clouds, you’ll see that the image is now brownish white clouds. Now with the new layer still selected, go click on Filters > Blur > Motion Blur. Now enter 90 in the Angle box , push the distance slider all the way to the right and click OK.

Step 5:

Now change the clouds layer blending mode to Hard Light and tune down the Opacity a little bit if your image is too faded away.

Now, your image should looks older and faded away just like below:

Step 6:

Next, we should begin applying some texture on the image by using some free downloadable brushes from Adobe Studio Exchange. They are ‘Paper Damage’ and ‘Decay Brush’. If you don’t have them on your system, please go to Adobe Studio Exchange and download them.

Step 7:

Now that you have downloaded and installed the Brushes Presets. Next, create a new layer and put it on top of other layers. At the toolbar, set up your foreground color to White. Then, select the brush tool and navigate to the top of your toolbar to adjust your ‘Paper Damage’ preset, make sure your load the preset first if it still in default.

You are free to adjust the size of the brush according to your image. After you selected your brush setting, click once on the bottom left corner of your image. Adjust the blending mode of this layer to Color. As you can see below, the ‘Paper Damage’ brush gives some tearing and rusted effect on the picture. Note: I used orange (#FFCC33) color mode on my foreground color chip on this tutorial to make the damage effect with stained rusting effect on it.

Step 8:

Now that you’re done with ‘Paper Damage’ effect, it’s time to put some ‘Decay brush’ on it. First create another new layer on top of the ‘Paper Damage’ layer and navigate to the brush toolbar menu just like on Step 7, load the ‘Decay’ preset and adjust the size and angle as you prefer, then click it once on the image. Adjust the blending mode of this layer to Soft Light or any that you prefer and play around with the opacity if the image ‘decay’ effect looks too hard.

Now as you can see, these 8 steps of Photoshop tutorial will make you image looks older like it was taken a long time ago.

OK. That’s all for now. Feel free to let us know if you have any tips and tricks that can improve the ‘old’ effect on this tutorial. We’ll appreciate it greatly. Now, enjoy destroying your pictures!