Vintage Black and White Photos

Today I’m listening to a collection of old Ink Spots albums…

So making photos look vintage seems appropriate.

Of course, having friends that love dressing up in vintage clothing helps for this one.

First, I’m going to up the contrast a little bit since the photo got a little washed out by the sun.

I’m going to merge this adjustment layer with the original photograph layer so that it won’t interfere with changing it to a black and white photo.

Now to turn the photo black and white I’m going to use the Black & White tool in the Adjustments window.

This way to turn things black and white is nice since it lets you play with the color sliders to make colors brighter or darker.

Play with these until it looks good to you, or you can even play with the options in the drop down box.

The Infrared option in there usually brings out an interesting effect.

Now I’m merging the black and white layer with the original again.

Then I’m going to up the contrast just a bit then since I’m personally rather fond of high contrast black and white photos.

Now I’m just going to clean up the skin and such.

In older photographs they sometimes used green powder on the skin to make it shine less while still making the highlights stand out.

It makes a nice and even skin tone for black and white photography.

Since I didn’t have green powder at the time though, I’m just to fix it up in Photoshop.

And now, since black and white photos never seem to manage to stay black and white for long, I’ll put a curve layer over all of this.

I’m going to use Julia Trotti’s “Alice in Wonderland” curve again.

_{(Once again, the link is at the very bottom of her post.)}

I think the purple hues will go nicely with this photo.

And then I think I’ll call this one done.

If you want to give it an extra vintage feel, you can always overlay a super grungy texture or even put coffee stains on it.

As always, if there’s something you’d like me to talk about let me know.

Today I’ll leave you with a little bit of Dame Vera Lynn.

_{(Fun fact: that song’s been covered by both the Ink Spots and Johnny Cash.)}