Vintage Film Photoshop Effect

————————————————————————————————————————————————

No, I really couldn't think of a better name.

I Really like the effect I used to make this photo, so I thought I'd share it here. 

It's actually really easy:

STEP 1:

Start with a picture

It helps if you start with a picture that was well lit to begin with, this one wasn't so I applied a Brightness/Contrast adjustment, in this case Brightness: 32  Contrast: 45

It should be kinda bright, and kinda contrast-y, because that makes it cooler-looking.  Play around with this adjustment layer afterwards to get the best effect for your photo 

Create a new gradient, then chose the purple->orange one.  It's one of the defaults, then set it to 'Reflected' and put the angle just any old place, but remember that what you're trying to replicate is the effect of light leaking onto your film from the edges of your cheap-o Camera. 

Also: scale it up to 150% 

When you're done it should look something like this: 

Then set your gradient's Blend Mode to Lighten: 

I made that bit bold so that you could see that it was important, the 'Lighten'  in conjunction with the purple and orange gives it that cool vintage effect: 

It kind of helps if your base image is in focus, but beyond that that's it.

NOTES: 

  You may have noticed some hidden layers that I didn't talk about, well those aren't important, they're just left over adjustment layers from when I was trying to figure out what it should look like.

ALTERNATIVELY:

You can add a texture over top, I would suggest this one: http://bashcorpo.deviantart.com/art/Grungy-paper-texture-v-14-82031827 

It's credit free and available for both personal and commercial uses.

Apply a Black and White adjustment to it, set it's blend mode to"Multiply" then put it's opacity on something like 45%.  That should do it.  {Or better yet, Divide, 100%}

 TIP: When working with textures, never worry about squashing it, it's a texture.  Squash and stretch it to your hearts content or until it fits the picture, no one will notice because no one notices texture, they just notice it's absence.