that vintage look

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jano

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While scanning some negs from this last year, I came across a picture taken with my contax that I'd like to photochop for a friend. The b&w neg, when scanned in, has an almost vintage look, slightly lower contrast, not pin-point sharp. I'd like to enhance this look, and finish off with a fully authentic "old-fashioned" look to the image. But I'm not quite sure what to do in PS.. after studying a few hundred photos, I'm still not sure what makes them that "old" quality.

I'm thinking after the print, to maybe smudge it up a bit, run some coffe/tea bags over it for an authentic looking "old." And then properly frame that.

Ideas?
 
To do that I opened an adjustment layer and choose Color Balance. Click ok then I slid the top bar +20 towards the Red, second bar -10 towards Magenta and third -20 towards Yellow. You can play with the sliders as however you like to get the toning that you need. Note that the image has to be in RBG mode to do this.
 
Thanks, but maybe looking for more than just a sepia tone. Maybe instead of how to do it.. what qualities make a photo look vintage? Rover, your photo is great, has that nice glow to it, but does not look "old" to my eyes.

- low contrast
- not perfect focus
- slight sepia tone
- vignetting? (white style?)
- grain?
- fading?

Maybe if I can get a better understand of qualities, perhaps it'll be easier :)
 
One thing to consider is the red sensativity of some of the older films, this can be sort of copied with the monochrome color balance features on adobe ps to some extent. I use a quad tone with some of my photos, though i am not sure how vintage they look...
 
jano said:
Thanks, but maybe looking for more than just a sepia tone. Maybe instead of how to do it.. what qualities make a photo look vintage? Rover, your photo is great, has that nice glow to it, but does not look "old" to my eyes.

- low contrast
- not perfect focus
- slight sepia tone
- vignetting? (white style?)
- grain?
- fading?

Maybe if I can get a better understand of qualities, perhaps it'll be easier :)
Click to expand...

One "signature" of some photos made with older lenses (especially available-light photos made with high-speed lenses) is that the image details are sharp, but are surrounded by a softer "halo."

You can simulate this somewhat by starting with a sharp image, making a duplicate layer, blurring the duplicate somewhat, and then lower its opacity until you have the desired sharp/blurred balance.

You can use either a simple Gaussian blur or experiment with other blur methods to simulate the "streaky" appearance produced by some older lenses. You also might want to try different blend modes (e.g. lighten, screen) for the blur layer.

I'm in the middle of a video capture so can't do any sample images, but I suspect you get the idea...
 
Great idea!

Great idea!

Perfect, thank you! That haze is what I was missing!

I actually dislike the method of duplicated layer and blurring that.. a much more subtle, yet still effective method was grabing the lightness channel ctrl-alt-~) and blurring that. Worked well.. and then created a radial gradient set to pin-light blending mode which just drives it home.

I'm a bit embarassed to show the result, as the subject matter will make everyone go :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes:

:p

But that's what I needed!

Now to choose the correct paper to print to.. with my printer, I may have to grunge it first, then print, because the inks are not waterproof. Better to use watercolor paper, or a plain matte (card stock variety?)? What was the feel/texture of papers from ye-olde days?
 
jano said:
What was the feel/texture of papers from ye-olde days?
Click to expand...

Egads, egads, egads. I am too old, kill me now.

Do your fingers smell like fixer? No? Then I can't describe what B&W paper felt like back then in a way that would make sense. Bamboo tongs slide over it like butter when it is in Dektol. That help? Prolly not. Paper didn't have a texture, it had a finish. And Dupont Defender Velour made me smile on the inside and look like I knew what I was doing.

I love the new ways, the coming digital world. But I'm afraid I'm already a dinosaur at 44.

Best Regards,

Bill Mattocks
 
jano said:
Perfect, thank you! That haze is what I was missing!

I actually dislike the method of duplicated layer and blurring that.. a much more subtle, yet still effective method was grabing the lightness channel ctrl-alt-~) and blurring that. Worked well.. and then created a radial gradient set to pin-light blending mode which just drives it home.
Click to expand...

Hmmm, I think I know what you mean, but I couldn't get it to work in CS2 -- wonder if they changed the keyboard shortcut?

I'm a bit embarassed to show the result, as the subject matter will make everyone go :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

Ah, come on, fess up... we're all friends here.

Meanwhile, I happened to have a photo on my computer of my choreographer friend Elizabeth, who I think has a sort of '30s-Hollywood-star look that would lend itself to a "glow" -- so I whipped up an example image using a different glow effect that I think I found in the tips section of Luminous Landscape. It looks a bit over-the-top in this small size, but seems to work nicely on images that are printed. I've attached the before-and-after example.


Bill, I know what you mean about the fingertips-smell-like-fixer stuff (I've just about gotten the smell out of mine...) But while I still don't get as much satisfaction out of a digital print as I did out of a good wet print, I've never been really happy in the darkroom since Agfa discontinued Portriga-Rapid... so I've got to do something, don't I?
 
Hey, Bill.. nah, you're not old enough, I'm looking for anything prior to the cretaceous era :p

Chaser, forgot to mention, the first photo there looks somewhat vintage, I'll have to look into the quad-tone thingy, thanks.

jlw: in your example, you may want to mask out around the eyes, nose, and chin to really make the "glamour glow" effect work.

Here, attached the photo with what I've done so far. Don't laugh. I did my first and only "photo shoot" for my guitar teacher as her gift to her husband. Both of them love their two pets, which have maybe less than a year to live (so sad *sniff*, wonderful animals). I used my digital rebel for 95% of the pictures, having totally forgoten I used my film camera at all, loaded with Acros. If you like to see pictures of other people's pets, feel free to click here. Not the greatest stuff ever, made some glaring mistakes, but both "parents" were extremly happy with the pictures :)

Does it look vintage enough?
 
An old prewar uncoated Leica lens and a blue filter... that will give it that ortho look...on tri x


The other thing is if you looking for a sepia type tone : if Im using C41 B&W film and load it into my scanner as B&W it has that tone..... if i load it as color neg. it does away with alot of the orange neg color
 
Rick: that's a great little plugin, isn't it? I suggest it to any amatuer photographer just looking for a quick dilly-daly in photoshop. I don't use it myself, though, I prefer the more hands-on approach.

Ray: thanks for your time. :) I'm not a fan of that affect as much, because the gaussian blur is too strong, and I prefer a more subtle method of using the lightness channel blurred (check out my response to your post back in September).

Skinny: that's good advice, and now I've got this aweful case of gas for a vintage lens, but here the goal is after the fact, and working with a negative in a digital sense.

Appreciate everyone's time and suggestions :)

Jano
 
Hmmm. It's tough to know exactly what you mean. Check this shot of my cousin out. (cute little bugger, 'aint she?)

I used a plug in called noise-ninja on it to reduce the grain but it also softens it just enough to give it a slight glow once I played around with the curves a bit. It's rough doing this since I have no idea if it will look the same on anyone else's screen but it's worth a shot.
 
jano said:
Rick: that's a great little plugin, isn't it? I suggest it to any amatuer photographer just looking for a quick dilly-daly in photoshop. I don't use it myself, though, I prefer the more hands-on approach.

Ray: thanks for your time. :) I'm not a fan of that affect as much, because the gaussian blur is too strong, and I prefer a more subtle method of using the lightness channel blurred (check out my response to your post back in September).

Skinny: that's good advice, and now I've got this aweful case of gas for a vintage lens, but here the goal is after the fact, and working with a negative in a digital sense.

Appreciate everyone's time and suggestions :)

Jano
Click to expand...
I really like the monday morning and the old photo filter from Virtual photographer
 
A few weeks ago I got a chance to look through the archives of a professional portrait photographer who was working in Baltimore, MD in the late 1800's early 1900's. I have no idea of what kind of equipment was used but what impressed me was how sharp the lens was and how shallow the depth of field was.

From my observations this studio focused on the subjects eyes, the depth of field was so shallow that there was a softness in every other plane.

With apologies to jlw, I modified his attachment to show somewhat the look I noted.
This is a very exagerated example.

The first is my modification of jlw's original. The second is jlw's originals
 
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