25Jul/100

Vintage/Retro Photo Post Processing Tutorial

I recently went down to Jacksonville, FL for a trip to house hunt because I will be moving there with my family mid September this year. While I was there I had the pleasure to meet up with a buddy of mine in Sebastian, Brian Storey (please check his work out; I can’t say enough about his skills). He made a few phone calls and was able to line up two models for both us to shoot, Taylor and Emily. I had a lot of fun and can't wait till I move in down there.

After posting some of Emily's photos, I was getting a lot of people asking me how I processed the photos. Although, not every one of her photos was processed like this exact tutorial. I will help explain how I did two of my favorite images from her session. I like to process a lot of my photos with a vintage/retro/old poloraid feel to them. I enjoy that style, and I feel it helps convey certain moods in photographs. Without this type of processing there would of been nothing exciting about the image. The original image is fine SOOC (straight out of camera), but the mood is created by the tones and final post-processing I did to it. Not every photo will come out like the end result in this tutorial. A lot of factors depend on how the end result will look. For example how well the original image was strobed, your scene, and original tones in the image.

You need a well lit image to begin with. It doesn't matter how good your post-processing skills are, you will need a good SOOC shot to begin this process. A lot of people don't understand the importance of lighting in your image (this is whole other topic). If your image isn't well lit, your image is broken. Always think ahead when you are on a shoot for how you think you will be processing the photo. This will help with model placement, poses, lighting, and other things to make your post-process (PP) easier and quicker. My workflow is always Camera>Lightroom>Photoshop. I split my editing almost equally between lightroom and photoshop now, but that also depends on the type of photo concept I am working on.

Here is my original image. It is a good exposure and I'm happy with it, but the mood just isn't complete.

Step 1

After you get it on your computer from your camera, import it into lightroom because we need to apply a preset to the image for the base effect.
Download Gavin's Old Poloraid LR Preset and apply it to the image. Below is what the image now looks like with the preset applied. Export the image from lightroom and open it up in photoshop. The majority of the work is done, and depending on your tastes you might just want to keep the image like that.

Step 2

Begin cleaning your model's skin up. Get rid of blemishes or other problems on your model if she has any. I am not going to walk you through how to fix or soften her skin. Use the healing or clone tool to help do the majority of your work. I also fixed Emily's boobs, because the dress or her bra was making an odd indentation in the upper part of her right boob creating a distraction (you can see this fix in the final edit as it takes a while to walk through it). I used the liquify filter combined with the new puppet tool in CS5 to help fix that area. Make sure you flatten your image after you are done with any fixes. Layer > Flatten Image

Now we are going to sharpen the photo a little. I sharpen all of my photos even if it's already tack sharp SOOC. Rule of thumb for sharpening is to not over do it, and to do it after you have re-sized your image to its final dimensions. Most people will sharpen last in their PP because that is usually when they will have their final crop dimensions worked out for print or web submission. It is up to you to make that judgment.

Duplicate your background layer, and set that layer blending mode to overlay. Go to Filter > Other > High Pass. You want to apply just enough high pass where the image looks a tad bit over-sharpened. For me I use a radius of 1.5 pixels. Hit ok to apply the effect, and then flatten your image again. Layer > Flatten Image

Step 3

We are almost there, but we need to make a few adjustment layers to complete the effect. Make a new group by clicking on the little folder icon in the bottom of the layers palette and rename as adjustments. That way we can keep our layers organized if you happen to have other layers in there, adjust the opacities of all the adjustments at once, and if you want to re-edit this down the road everything is where it should be. Make sure the blending mode is set as pass through, and you can go ahead and adjust the opacity of the folder to 50%. You may need to change this later on to better fit your desired effect.

In the bottom of the layers palette add a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer and set the saturation to +20.

In the bottom of the layers palette add a Brightness/Contrast adjustment layer and set the Contrast to +20.

Now go to Layer > New Fill Layer > Gradient.
Name the layer Fill - Blending mode overlay - 30% Opacity
Press ok.

Set your gradient to white/transparent. Radial - 90 degree angle - 110% scale
Press ok.

In the bottom of the layers palette add a Curves adjustment layer and set the following settings.

Now set your curve points to these settings.
Red Channel:
Output: 0 Input: 0
Output: 46 Input: 84
Output: 187 Input: 176
Output: 255 Input: 211

Blue Channel:
Output: 28 Input:
Output: 223 Input: 255

Green Channel:
Output: 60 Input: 64
Output: 207 Input: 183
Output: 255 Input: 255

In the bottom of the layers palette add a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer and set the following settings and change the opacity of this layer to 50%.

In the bottom of the layers palette add a Solid Color adjustment layer and set the following settings.

Step 4

You are finally done! Now you can adjust the opacities of the layers or adjustments folder depending on how strong you want the effect to be on your image. Fallout, on flickr, has made this into an action so you can just run his action instead of having to go through all of the steps. You can download the action. However, I have tweaked his action set a little to my liking so it produces a nicer effect in my opinion. Which is why I walked you through the steps.

PART 2

Now for Emily's Next image this will require a bit more work. I am not going to show you how to add in the birds as I did in this image, but I will walk you through how to achieve the color tones I applied to the image. I will provide the bird images at the end if for some reason you need them.

This is the orignal image SOOC.

Step 1

As I said in step 4 of the small tutorial up top about downloading fallout's action you will need it specially for this image. You can download the action. We will tweak the action a little, and add a few more things to complete this image to our liking.

Step 2

Now open your image in photoshop. Sharpen it as we did in step 2 above in the other image of Emily.
Duplicate your background layer, and set that layer blending mode to overlay. Go to Filter > Other > High Pass. You want to apply just enough high pass where the image looks a tad bit over-sharpened. For me I use a radius of 1.5 pixels. Hit ok to apply the effect, and then flatten your image again. Layer > Flatten Image

You can also start cleaning up your image and your model's skin if needed.

Step 3

In the bottom of the layers palette add a Curves adjustment layer and set the following settings.
Set your curve points to these settings.

Red Channel:
Output: 0 Input: 0
Output: 28 Input: 55
Output: 176 Input: 167
Output: 255 Input: 250

Green Channel:
Output: 0 Input: 0
Output: 170 Input: 135
Output: 255 Input: 255

Blue Channel:
Output: 38 Input: 0
Output: 106 Input: 74
Output: 156 Input: 190
Output: 217 Input: 255

Now outline your subject and add a mask to that curves layer and fill the selection of your subject with black. Change the layer to 80% opacity.

Step 4

Now add a new layer and fill it with a solid magenta color - #ff00e4. Set the opacity to 18% and blending mode to soft light.

Step 5

Click on your background layer and now run fallout's vintage action preset, but you will need to change some opacities after it is done. Once you have ran it on the image move the group folder on top of everything in the layers palette. Open the group contents and you will need to delete the magenta cast layer, contrast, and saturation layer. Now change the sepia layer to 10% opacity, the cross process layer to 10% opacity, the vignette layer to 5%, and the center fill light to 10%. Make sure the whole group folder is set to 100% and pass through.

Step 6

In the bottom of the layers palette add a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer and set the saturation to -18.
Duplicate that hue/saturation layer we just made, and click on the mask next to the hue image to activate the mask. Load the selection of your subject from the other mask we created in the first cross process layer by command+clicking the mask layer (ctrl+click for windows). Invert your selection by going to Select > Inverse. Now fill your mask with black so your subject is white. Change the layer opacity to 60%. Check the image below if you get confused.

Step 7

In the bottom of the layers palette add a Levels adjustment layer. This will be what pulls our dead gamma out of the image to make it pop. Adjust the sliders so the far right slider (the highlights) are touching the first highlights in your image. The way you can tell where your highlights start is to look at the histogram and follow the black curve. Slide the far right sider to where that black curve comes to end. Do the same for the far left slider (the shadows). This pulls all of the dead gamma out of your image and brings it back to life. Your histogram will vary. If your image has extremes highlights and shadows or mid-tones adjust accordingly.

There ya go! That should be it. Adjust all your opacities on each layer to get your desired affect. Like I said above your image will vary depending on your original tones and other factors. If anyone follows this tutorial, I would love to see your final results. Just post a comment with the link to your image and I will take a look at it!

If for some reason you want to add in the birds here is the image I got the birds from. Just use the pen tool to outline them. Right click and make a selection, featherd with .1 pixels, and then extract the birds out with the selection.

Download Birds Image (right click, save as)