Aging A Photo In Photoshop Elements

I was asked here how I artificially age photos. I shoot Civil War Re-enactments on a regular basis and many times I will age them to make them look period authentic. One of my photo clubs asked me the same thing and I posted a how-to on our message board. It then became the topic on a couple of the photo boards I am on so I re-posted it for others. The names mentioned are from the original club it was written for. This is the text from that how-to and I will include a couple of photos using this technique in various ways:

Diane asked me how I do the Civil War Reenactment photos the way I do. I made a joke about a PP fairy (sorry Diane, it’s just my humor), but the truth is, there is quite a bit that goes into them. Just so you know Diane, someone even asked if I have a time machine built into my camera!

First, this image was shot with that thought in mind. The weather was atrocious (bouncing between freezing rain and snow) which is PERFECT for flash photography! I used a Metz 54-MZ-4i flash off-camera with a Lumiquest mini-softbox that Esty was good enough to hold above the subject for me to give the illusion of a light being shined down on the subject. I used a center spot focus on the bottle because I wanted the label clear. It was shot in RAW with a Canon 40D, manual mode, using a Canon 28mm EF USM f/1.8 with the following settings: SS, 1/60; Aperture, f/1.8; ISO, 100.

But the “magic” really happens once I get home. Once converted from RAW using ACR, the image is brought into Adobe Photoshop Elements 7. I first copy (ctrl J) the base layer that way I can just delete the layer if I make a mistake and start over. Before I convert to B&W, I work the contrast a bit to maximize my conversion. I then convert to B&W and modify the RGB channels to further work the contrast. I then added a little noise (yes, you heard that right, I ADDED noise).

Once I am happy with it, Elements 7 has two ways to go to a Sepia conversion. There is a Sepia filter in the Filter/Adjustments menu. That works ok. But the Sepia Effect in the Effects Palette is far superior in Sepia quality. I converted the working layer to Sepia. Once that was done, I copied the working layer. Any time I add a new effect I use a separate layer. This allows me to adjust opacity to limit the effect on the image as well as remove mistakes without affecting the good layers.

On this new layer, I went back to the Effects Palette where I clicked on the Photo Effects tab, then I picked Old Photo/Old Photo from the drop down menu. That gave the new layer a kind of nasty look, but that is ok, I had no intention of using all of it. To reduce the effect, I lowered opacity to a level I felt was appropriate for the look I wanted.

I know this sounds complicated and if you only have a base knowledge of Elements, it is. But it really took me very little time to make all these changes to the photo to get the look I wanted. I posted this photo in our January album so you can see it in the largest size I am making available on the internet.

Now a few photos using this technique:

The next photo was shot with B&W in mind and was not converted to Sepia. I wanted an old Florida photo look so I used a similar technique but with a higher contrast before the B&W conversion. I then added noise to it to give the “Old Florida Photo” look.

Hopefully this helps those who were wondering how I do this. It does require an advanced knowledge of Photoshop Elements though.