Design Oahu

It is really easy to take any photograph and created a weathered look with some simple Photoshop adjustment layers. I took this picture on the south shore of Oahu right near Sandy’s Beach. I am going to try and make it look like a picture I would find at my Grandparents’ house.

If you don’t have the Layers palette open do so by going to Window->Layers of hit F7. Now select the “New fill or adjustment layer” icon (half black/half white circle), and select Channel Mixer.

Check the Monochrome checkbox to turn the image into black and white. Before I knew better I would always select Image->Mode->Grayscale, however this gives you very little control over the grays. Check out this great tutorial for more color to b&w conversion information. I chose to use the blue channel of the Channel Mixer, so I moved the red and green sliders to 0 and the blue to 100.

Now that we have a great looking black and white photo, but to get that old fashioned look, I needs to have that sandy tint to it. To do this press the “New fill or adjustment layer” button and select “Solid Color”. I used the color #f6ed9d but you can of course choose whatever you like.

Now, make sure the solid color fill layer is select in the layers palette and change the layer to “Multiply”. The Multiply Mode multiplies the base color by the blend color. Learn more about multiply mode.

I think are image looks pretty old already, but I added one additional step which is to give it a crumpled look. To do this I crumpled up a piece of paper and scanned it. You can download my crumpled paper scan to save you time, or if you don’t have a scanner. With the crumpled paper, I just pasted it to a new layer and positioned it to where I thought it looked nice. Then I set the layer to multiple once again.

So, there you have it an old fashioned weathered image:

Also, you can hide layers and save the images to get different effects. Here is the black and white photo:

Here is what I call the Technicolor image:

Also here is the original if you would like to use it: