Hello SC friends! Kelly here with another quick and easy photoshop tutorial. There are so many fun things you can do to your photos during post-processing. We've talked before about using actions on your photos to give the color a boost or convert photos to black and white. And although actions aren't the end all be all of editing, they are a fun way to fix up your photos in a hurry. The vintage look is really trendy right now and you can easily achieve the look with vintage actions. I got this free vintage action from The CoffeeShop Blog. (p.s. there are TONS of great PS and PSE actions on The CoffeeShop Blog!!)
Here's the before image I'll be processing...
The first step is to download the action and then load the action into Photoshop. In the actions palette, click on the little drop down menu in the top right corner and then click on Load Actions. A window will pop up and from there you can search for and double click on your downloaded action, click OK and then Photoshop will load it into your actions palette. The rest is so super easy....just open the photo you want to process. Then, click on the Simply Vintage action tab in the actions palette and it will process your photo.
At this point, if you're happy with the processing, you can leave it as is and flatten your image (Layer>Flatten Image). It depends on the photo, but I usually like to do a bit of adjusting. Click on each layer you want to adjust in the layers palette and slide the opacity slider left or right until you get the effect you're after. At this point, the adjusting is up to your personal preference, but I wouldn't recommend going too extreme in either direction w/the sliders. A slight adjustment is usually all that's needed.
And here's the after...
This technique is super simple and such a great way to add some fun to your photos. Be sure to link us up here if you go vintage with your photos....we'd love to see!
darling photo! cool technique! thanks for sharing!
Posted by: Ann-Marie | 01/04/2011 at 02:22 PM
thanks for the tip!
Posted by: Beth Perry | 01/04/2011 at 09:59 PM
Kelly, thank you for the tutorial! I really like the pictures in this style. But I can't find the Simply Vintage action tab...
It may be possible to make a picture a little more?
Posted by: berta | 01/05/2011 at 10:57 AM
OH I could KISS YOU! lol..I just went to that blog and am gonna be one installing fool! I just used Coffeshop actions.. LOOOOVE IT! about to work on a page with it. :)
Posted by: Ellie | 01/05/2011 at 04:42 PM
How happy was I to see that I already have this action loaded? Thanks for reminding me! Time to use it.
Posted by: Jennifer Larson | 01/05/2011 at 08:18 PM