As I’ve gotten more interested in photography I’ve been trying to increase my arsenal of effects I could use to better tweak photos to get the look and moods I am going for. Unfortunately, for now I’ve been limited to the controls offered in Apple’s iPhoto program.
That’s not the say iPhoto doesn’t have a a nice stable of user-friendly effects. By boosting saturation, changing photos to black and white or sepia, or fading the color I’ve been able to enhance the photos just fine. But there’s one effect, giving your photos a retro look, that I’ve lacked.
Apple’s iPhoto has an effect called “antique” that gives photos an old look by softening the light and overlaying a pinkish-orange hue. But it’s not exactly retro. Rather, it creates more of an aged or weathered look. To get the effect I want I was going to have to do it myself, using Photoshop. To help, I found this step-by-step guide to getting the effects I want on Howcast.
To test the technique I took a pretty nice photo I took of a Long Island Rail Road train approaching the platform in St. James one recent summer morning and followed the instructions. It worked, and, even better, editing the photo opened me up to the Photoshop techniques I haven’t learned yet, things like masks and gradient overlays. It’s added a whole new realm of possibilities for my newfound method of expression.
I’ll give the retro treatment to a batch of my photos and post them later, but, for now, here is the photo I edited, before retro and after retro.
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Journalist, writer, musician and Long Island family man. Regional editor for Patch.com covering much of Suffolk County. Jazz lover, wine geek, iPhone addict.
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