Authentic Vintage Effect

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A beautiful effect for giving your photos an old vintage feel.

Note: This tutorial has been adapted from this Photoshop tutorial by Veerle.

Choosing your photo

This effect tends to work best with photos with vivid colors (sky, grass, etc). This is the photo we will be using:

The following steps are for this photo. Remember to experiment as each photo is unique!

Once you've opened your photo, go to Colors > Brightness-Contrast... and set the contrast to +20.

Colors > Hue-Saturation:

Now go to Colors > Curves. Select "Red" from the Channel drop-down and adjust the curve:

Next, adjust the "Green" channel:

And the "Blue" channel:

Click OK.

Go to Colors > Hue-Saturation again:

Create a new layer. Set its opacity to about 50%.

Select the ellipse select tool and draw a selection that covers your entire canvas.

Select > Feather by 150px:

Select > Invert.

Fill your selection with black.

To give your photo a pinkish tone (associated with sun burn of old photos), create a new layer. Set its opacity to about 8%.

Fill it with a very vivid magenta (#FF0090).