Digital Darkroom: Photoshop an Aged Cool or Warm Tint to a Photograph

You can use Photoshop to give digital pictures an aged tint, emulating the sort of colors seen in certain film photographs. This article will outline one way to perform this kind of processing. First, here is the original photograph I will be using in this demonstration (sadly, this is not my Bentley):

Photoshop an aged, cool tint

These settings will produce a cool, blue tint that looks a bit faded.

1. Create a new layer.
2. Fill the layer with a blue-gray color. I chose #1e407a.
3. Change the layer blend mode to “Exclusion”.
4. Play with the layer opacity until you find a setting that you like. I settled on 60%.

Photoshop an aged, warm tint

This process follows the same set of instructions, but uses an orange-brown shade to produce a warm tint.

1. Create a new layer.
2. Fill the layer with a solid orange-brown color. I chose #b2762f.
3. Change the layer blend mode to “Exclusion”.
4. Adjust the layer opacity to your liking. I settled on 35%.

Experiment with your own colors

As you can see, both of these simple processes have the same basic steps. Try choosing different colors for the exclusion layer, mess around with the layer opacity, and see what kind of interesting effects you can produce.