In this Adobe Photoshop tutorial, we’re going to look at how to do a bit of reverse photo restoration, turning a new or recent photo into an old photo.

The final image will be look like:

Here’s the image I’ll be working with in this Photoshop tutorial:

Step 1: Add A Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layer:

With our image newly opened in Photoshop, the first thing we’re going to do is replace the photo’s bright colors with a classic sepia tone, and we can do that easily using a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer. Click on the New Adjustment Layer icon at the bottom of the Layers palette:

Clicking on the “New Adjustment Layer” icon at the bottom of the Layers palette. Then choose Hue/Saturation from the list of adjustment layers that appears:

This brings up the Hue/Saturation dialog box. Click inside the checkbox to the left of the Colorize option in the bottom right of the dialog box, then drag the Hue slider to around 40 for a nice sepia tone:

Select the “Colorize” option in the bottom right of the Hue/Saturation dialog box, then set the “Hue” value to around 40.Click OK when you’re done to exit out of the dialog box. If we look in our Layers palette now, we can see the Hue/Saturation adjustment layer that we’ve added above the Background layer (the layer which contains our original image):

And if we look at our image in the document window, we can see that the original color has been replaced with a sepia tone:

Step 2: Merge Both Layers Onto A New Layer

For our next step, we need to have of our existing layers merged on to a new layer above them. To do that, with the adjustment layer still selected in the Layers palette, hold down your Alt (Win) / Option (Mac) key, then while holding the key down, go up to the Layer menu at the top of the screen and select Merge Visible. You can also use the keyboard shortcut for this, which is Shift+Ctrl+Alt+E (Win) / Shift+Command+Option+E (Mac):

By holding down the Alt/Option key while selecting Merge Visible (or adding it to the keyboard shortcut), we tell Photoshop to create a brand new layer for us and merge everything onto that new layer while keeping our original layers intact. If we look now in the Layers palette, we can see that sure enough, Photoshop has created a new layer above the previous two layers and has merged the other two layers onto it. We can see our sepia tone image in the new layer’s preview thumbnail:

Step 3: Rename The New Layer “Glow”

We’re going to use our merged layer to give our image a nice high contrast glow to it, and since we’ll be adding a few more layers after that, let’s keep track of what we’re doing with each layer by giving them more informative names than simply “Layer 1″, “Layer 2″, and so on. Double-click directly on the name “Layer 1″ in the Layers palette and rename it to “Glow”:

Step 4: Apply The Gaussian Blur Filter To The Merged Layer

To create our high contrast glow effect, we need to blur out our merged layer. To do that, with the “Glow” layer selected in the Layers palette (I’ll assume from here on that you’re renaming your layers), go up to the Filter menu at the top of the screen, choose Blur, and then choose Gaussian Blur, which is by far the most commonly used filter for blurring an image in Photoshop:

Go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur.
When the Gaussian Blur dialog box appears, drag the Radius slider at the bottom of the dialog box towards the right until your Radius value is around 6 pixels. I’m working with a low resolution image for this tutorial, but if you’re using a high resolution image, you’ll want to try a slightly higher setting. You want to apply just enough blur so that you remove most of the detail from the image without going so far that you can’t make anything out at all:

Click OK when you’re done to exit out of the dialog box. Here’s my image after applying the blur to the merged layer. Notice how I’ve blurred it without going beyond the point where it would be impossible to figure out what’s in the photo:

Step 5: Change The Blend Mode Of The Blurred Layer To “Overlay”

Now that we’ve blurred out our merged layer, go up to the Blend Mode option in the top left corner of the Layers palette. It doesn’t actually say “Blend Mode” anywhere, so just look for the selection box that is currently set to “Normal”. Click on the down-pointing arrow to bring up a list of available blend modes and select Overlay from the list:

If we look at our image in the document window, we can see that it now has a soft, high contrast glow to it, which is a great effect to use on a photo even if you’re not trying to make it appear older:

Step 6: Lower The Opacity Of The “Glow” Layer

If you find, and you most likely will, that your glow effect appears too intense, you can adjust it by simply lowering the opacity of the “Glow” layer. The Opacity option is directly across from the Blend Mode option at the top of the Layers palette. I’m going to lower mine all the way down to about 70%:

Finally:

Credit: photoshopessentials