The appeal of vintage photos is difficult to define, but there’s no denying that it exists. Partly it is due to the nostalgia that such photos evoke, and partly because they stand out and look unique especially beside crisp and vivid modern photographs.
If you want to mimic the aesthetic that old photos have and create vintage photos of your own it is certainly possible – and just takes few edits and alterations.
“What Edits Make Photos Look Vintage?”
Before you can edit your photo to make it look vintage, you first need to know what types of edits to perform. There are a few that are commonly used, and it is up to you to decide which one.
One of the main characteristics of vintage photos are their faded appearance and sepia or yellowish-tint. That can normally be accomplished by lowering the saturation of the photo, and applying a tone map or adjusting the hue of the photo.
Another excellent way to make photos look vintage is to add some film grain. In days past the material on films used to be uneven and resulted in lots of grain, and although digital photos have none you can add some quite easily.
Last but not least you can try a vignette effect to darken (or brighten) the outer area of the photo to mimic the light fall off present in old lenses.
Create a Vintage Photo Using PhotoWorks
In PhotoWorks you can manually edit your photos in all of the ways described above, and then some. However that really isn’t necessary, and there is an easier way to learn how to make pictures look vintage using it that takes just a few simple steps:
- Launch PhotoWorks after you download and install it, then open up the photo that you want to edit and turn vintage.
- Adjust the color balance automatically by opening up the Enhancement tab and ticking the Color and Light options under Auto correction.
- Apply a vintage filter by opening the Effects tab and selecting the Vintage effects option in the list. As you’ll see there are a variety of different types of vintage photo effects for you to pick.
- Try out vintage effects at different strengths by adjusting the slider beneath the image. Each filter has a slightly different style, and adjusting its strength could make a world of difference.
- Finalize the changes by clicking Apply and then save your photo.
As you can see not only is it straightforward, but PhotoWorks will let you choose between a number of different styles of vintages photos. As mentioned previously however you can explore its other features and apply alterations manually to your photo to make it look unique.
In particular to truly bring out the vintage aesthetic you may want to add additional film grain, lighten or darken the edges of the photo, and desaturate the image while applying a sepia tone to it. All of that and more can be done quite easily with the features in PhotoWorks.