Aging Photos

First, download the Photoshop Document (PSD) used in this tutorial.

Stock image used in this tutorial (PSD)

Click the "Create New Fill or Adjustment Layer" button (black and white circle) at the bottom of the layers palette.

Then from that menu select "Hue/Saturation"

In the Hue/Saturation dialogue box, check "colorize" and lower the saturation to 12 and set the Hue to 32. These settings are only to my taste, feel free to try other settings.

Select the background images (this should be your image) and from the Photoshop menu bar select Filter/Noise/Add Noise... In the noise dialogue box, set the Distribution to Gaussian (this gives a more natural looking effect) and select monochromic. Then adjust the amount of noise to taste. I used 6.37. Larger images or older photos may need more to get the same effect.

I like the look that old images have when they have been shuffles in a deck of pictures over the years. Small scratches that give the image a worn look. There are many methods to get realistic distressed look. We are going for easy and something that can be applied to a group of photos all in one step.

Create 2 new layers by clicking the "Add New Layer" button at the bottom of the layers box. These layers should appear above the two layers you now have.

Select the very top layer and press "D" then press "Ctrl+Backspace" this will fill the layer with white.

You should now have 4 layers.

1. at the top a white layer.
2. a blank layer
3. your Hue/Saturation layer
4. the background layer (your image)

In the layer box, you should now have the top (white) layer selected.

Set the layer type to "Dissolve" in the layer type drop down menu. Now set the layer opacity to 1%. If you look at the picture you should see white dots dispersed over your image. This effect is also good for creating star fields.

Now, we want to apply another effect to this layer but first we need to let Photoshop do so. To do these we need to rasterize the layer. Since Photoshop hasn\'t provided us with an easy way to do this, we have to merge it with the blank layer below.

Press Ctrl+E. This will merge the top (white dots) layer with the blank layer immediatly below it.

Now we complete this effect. From the menu bar select Filter/Blur/Motion Blur...

In the Motion Blur dialogue box, set the Angle to 90 and the Distance to 999 pixels.

This will give you small white lines running vertically from the edges but not meeting in the middle.

Click OK and voila! You have successful aged your photograph. You can record these steps using the actions tool in Photoshop to run in batch mode on a group of images.