Tutorial Tuesday: Matte Vintage Photo Effect

 

Hey guys! Nicole here from Urban Wings Art and I am thrilled to share with you some of my photography, design, and editing tips, tricks and SSSHHHHH secrets! Some of my tutorials are going to be step by step and posted right here on the blog. Others are going to be video tutorials!....but (and here is the caveat)....you MUST forgive me if you hear a lot of "ummmms".....awkward pauses or... if I generally make a complete goof of myself! I tend to do that A LOT! Ask my family! But if you promise to forgive me for keeping it real, then I am happy to bring you more video tuts in the future!!!! And be sure to share the tutorials, videos and tips with your facebook friends, your pinterest pals....you get the idea! We love the LOVE that you can give us and it helps us know what you would like to see more of!!!  

This week's tutorial: Vintage Matted Photo Effect in Photoshop 

 So I was all excited to bring you this tutorial as a video this week. But low and behold, I can't get my video recorder to work right. Yes, I am SURE it's a user error and I am trying to remedy that, but you will have to be patient in the meantime and hopefully you can easily follow along on this step by step tutorial! This tutorial is pretty simple. So let's start by picking a photo that would work well with a vintage coloring and a matte effect. Close-ups of seniors or romantic pics of engagements or weddings always work great for this effect! And this is SO popular right now, I have seen this effect done by a lot of very awesome photographers! Once have you edited your photo (popped those eyes and made them sparkle, cleaned up any skin imperfections, etc.) then we are ready to start!  

The first thing I am going to add is a curves layer to add some vintage coloring to my photo. I do this by going to: 

LAYER> NEW ADJUSTMENT LAYER> CURVES

  

The first adjustment on my Curves I make is I pull the center part of the RGB curve up slight and bring the bottom left corner of the RGB curve in. This lightens up the midtones of my photo and darkens up the blacks. 

 

 Next, I stay on my Curves adjustment layer and I switch the dropdown to BLUE. For my BLUE Adjustment I pull the top right down slight to make my highlights slightly more yellow casted. And I pull my bottom left up to make my blacks more blue casted.  

   

 Now that we are done with our curves adjustments we are going to make another adjustment layer. 

LAYERS> NEW ADJUSTMENT LAYER> LEVELS 

We are going to adjust how dark our blacks are and how bright our whites are. This is going to create the matted tones we are looking for! We are going to pull our output levels in slightly on the right and the left side. I have pulled my output levels from 0-255 and moved them to 5-230.  

Now we are going to swap the two layers. Pull your curves layers so that it is under your levels layer in your layer palette.

  

At this point you are DONE! If you are working with a close-up portrait you might want to adjust the yellow tones in the eyes and teeth so that they aren't as yellow. Look for more tutorials on how to adjust selected colors coming soon!!! 

  

 More tutorials coming next Tuesday! Have an awesome week!!!!