Create a Vintage Polaroid Effect

Create a Vintage Polaroid Effect

written by: Andrew Houle / stashed in: Photo Manipulation / 06.23.08

I love anything graphic design that has that vintage grunge kind of look. This tutorial will show you how to create a stunning vintage polaroid effect. It’s fairly simple to make and can be used in many different types of projects.

What you’ll need

This tutorial will be completed using mostly filters and fills, but we will need three photos to complete the look. The first is the tractor image we’ll fill in the polaroid with, if you have an image you’d like to substitute, by all means use that. Also in the zipped file are two grunge textures. Download them all here. Note that the photo was one I found at stock.xchg, an awesome free stock photography site, that is nearly as good as IStock (but it’s FREE!) I found the textures at grungetextures.com, another useful and free site.

Onwards, to the tutorial

• Start by creating a new document in photoshop to the specs you like, I used 500px by 500px.
• Grab the gradient tool (shortcut ‘g’ on the keyboard), set gradient type to radial gradient. Double click the edit gradient thumbnail to bring up the gradient editor.



• Within the gradient editor set the first color stop to a nice brown (I used #6e5f3a) and set the second color stop to a darker brown (I used #171613). Click OK.



• With the gradient tool still selected click somewhere in the middle and drag out to a corner, until you have a nice brown radial gradient.



• We are going to add more texture and interest to our background. Click filter->texture->texturizer. Choose canvas for the texture, 61% for the scaling, 2 for the relief, and top left for the light.



• Open up the cardboard texture you downloaded earlier. Grab the move tool (shortcut ‘v’ on the keyboard). Click and drag the cardboard texture onto your vintage polaroid document. When you release the mouse button it will drop the cardboard texture on the top layer. Rename that layer ‘Grunge 1′.
• Hit ‘ctrl, t’ to bring up the free transform tool and resize your grunge1 layer to something smaller that just covers your document, hit ‘enter’.



• Change the layer mode to multiply and the opacity to 65%.



• Place the paper grunge texture on the top layer, just like the steps above, name this layer ‘Grunge 2′. Hit ‘ctrl, t’ and resize it. Change the layer mode to multiply and the opacity to 50%. That should do it for our background, it should look something like the image below.



• Create a new layer, name in ‘Polaroid Border’
• Grab the rectangle marquee tool (shortcut ‘m’ on the keyboard) and drag out a rectangle in the center of the document at the size you want your polaroid to be.



• Set the foreground color to white (#ffffff) and the background color to #bbbbbb.
• Click filter->render->clouds. This will fill our selection with grayish clouds.



• Add some noise. Click filter->noise->add noise. Change the amount to 1.3%, the distribution to gaussian and make sure monocromatic is checked. Click OK.



• One last filter to help with the look. Click filter->brush strokes->crosshatch. Change the sliders to as follows: stroke length 9, sharpness 6, strength 1. Click OK



• Let’s add some of that vintage brown color back into the polaroid. Click image->adjustments->hue/saturation. Change the settings to: Hue 33, Saturation 30, Brightness +32.



• Double click to the right of the layer name (’Polaroid Border’) to bring up the layer styles window. Click to add a drop shadow and change the distance to 4 and the size to 4. Keep everything else the same.



• Within the same layer styles window click to add a stroke. Change the width to 1px, and the fill type to pattern and choose the pattern shown below. This will give is a nice tattered edge.



• Create a new layer at the top and name it ‘Polaroid BG’.
• Grab the marquee tool and select a rectangle within the polaroid border like below.



• Set your background color to black and hit ‘ctrl, backspace’ on the keyboard to fill your selection with black.
• Open up the tractor photo you downloaded in the beginning of this tutorial and drag it onto the top layer of your vintage polaroid document. Call this layer ‘Tractor’.
• Hit ‘ctrl, t’ to bring up the free transform tool again and resize the tractor photo to about the same size as the black fill, leave a little overlap on each side. Like below.



• Now select the ‘Polaroid BG’ layer by holding down ‘ctrl’ and clicking on the image thumbnail on the layer.



• Click shift, ctrl, i to select the inverse. Click back to the ‘Tractor’ layer and click ctrl, x to cut out the pixels that are past the border.
• Double click to the right of the ‘Tractor’ layer name to bring up the layer styles box once again. Click to add an inner shadow. Change the opacity to 57%, the distance to 2px, the size to 3px and the noise to 10%.



• Within the layer style window also add a stroke just like the one on the ‘Polaroid Border’ layer. 1px, and the same pattern.



• OK, we are getting there, now we need to desaturate our photo a little bit to keep with our vintage theme. Click image->adjustments->hue/saturation. Change the hue to 32, the saturation to 30 and the brightness to -7.



• Highlight the three polaroid layers by clicking on ‘Tractor’ holding down shift and clicking on ‘Polaroid Border’. Now right click anywhere along the three highlighted layer and choose Link Layers.
• Bring up the free transform tool (ctrl, t) and rotate the image to the right a little. To rotate the image hover your curser over the top right corner until you get the double arrow with the arch then click and drag.



• That effect looks awesome already, I just added a couple more finishing touches. First let’s add two more pictures behind that one. Click and drag your three highlighted layers to the new layer icon at the bottom of the layers palette.



• Click and drag the copied three polaroid layers below the originals. Right click anywhere along the three copied and highlighted layers. In the options that appear, click Merge Layers.



• ‘Hit ‘ctrl, t’ on the ‘Tractor copy’ layer and rotate it to the left.
• Click image->adjustments->levels and drag the black slider and the midtone slider to the right to darken the background polaroid slightly to give it some depth.
• Repeat the above steps to add a third polaroid at the bottom. Until you have something that looks like this.



• If you’d like to add some text to the bottom, that’s a nice touch as well. I used a font called brisa alternates, but any sort of handwritten font should do the trick. I also converted the text to a smart object. Added a layer mask, and used a grunge brush to brush out some of the text to have it fit in with the rest of the image. Here’s my final image.

Adding Light To A Photo

Step 1: First we need a background, I use this beautiful back-and-white photo, which has inspired me a lot:

Go to Image > Adjustments > Color Balance or press Ctrl-B to bring up the Color Balance box, adjust only Midtones settings to bring our photo a little color

Step 2: Reset your foreground and background colors by pressing D. Create a new layer and go to Filter > Render > Clouds to create some clouds

Go to Filter > Render > Difference Clouds and repeat this effect some times (by pressing Ctrl-F) until you get an image like this

Notice that we should have some white clouds on the left because they will transfer into light in a next few steps

Step 3: Go to Image > Adjustments > Brightness / Contrast and use the following settings:

Increase the black and white areas by going to Image > Adjustments > Levels (Ctrl-L), move the black and white points to the center

Step 4: Go to Filter > Blur > Motion Blur and use these settings:

Change the blending mode of this layer to Soft Light

If the light is still too sharp, go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur, adjust it to make the light blur enough

Step 5: In this step, we will make the light more realistic. Create a vector mask on the current layer (by pressing the Add vector mask at the bottom of Layers tab) and use the Gradient tool with White to Black and Radial Gradient options to draw a line from the top-right to the bottom-left corner

Now our light had the gradient effect! Press Ctrl-J to duplicate this layer, our light will become brighter.

Step 6: Bring a little color to our light! We can't apply color directly to the white light we has created with Hue/Saturation or Color Balance so we will use a little trick here. Create a new layer and use the Brush tool with a soft brush and orange foreground (#ffa800). Now paint your photo like this:

Change the Blending mode to Soft Light and ...wow, our light is awesome

In the image above I added some more lights using the same technique

Multi Coloured Abstract Scene

Welcome back to another one of my blog posts. In this tutorial i show you how to make the hyped up, multi coloured overlay effect.

Ok so you open a brand new image, yep brand new, spanking new in fact, and make the dimensions whatever tickles your pickle… in other words any you like. You then make the background colour black.

We now make a new layer, which will be called “layer 1″ and choose a good sized brush in my example 300 diameter is good, and always use 0% hardness.

You then start colouring in the layer 1, and as many colours as you like, but don’t be dull use bright exciting colours.

We now change the blend mode of layer 1 to overlay. The layer should turn black, well we think its black, but wait for later on.

We now click on the background layer which is the black one, and press new layer. We will have a new layer between the background layer and layer 1.

Now choose a brush you like, change the colour to white, NOTE !!! COLOUR HAS TO BE WHITE OTHERWISE IT WONT WORK, and then you just start brushing away on layer 2. You will get something like what i have but of course yours will be different as we’re using different brushes. If you need good brushes go to : http://www.brusheezy.com/

GLOWING

Step 1: Getting the stuff you need

To create the artwork you will need the following resources:

• Brushset No.14
• Nightsky Brushes - I couldnt find the author’s name. Please tell me if it’s yours, I will credit it.
• (3D program like Cinema 4D - If you want to use 3D text-objects)

Step 2: Let’s start

Create a new file (I took 800×600) and fill it black.

Step 3:

Take the gradient tool and draw a vertical line (colors: black and darkgrey). Black at the top, darkgrey at the bottom.

Step 4:

Create a new layer, foreground color: #3a3a3a, background color: #dedede and use render -> clouds. Then set the layer on ‘overlay’.

Step 5:

Insert your object you want to give the burn effect. I took a 3D text object, which I’ve created with Cinema 4D.

Step 6:

Now create a new layer, take the last brush of the Brushset No.14 (brush size: ~700px) and click into the picture (foreground color has to be white!). Now transform the brush until you get a result like I got.

Step 7:

Use the eraser (soft pencilbrush) and erase some parts of the brush. Your result should look like this.

Step 8:

Create a new layer below the object-layer. Take the nightsky brush (called sampled brush #12) and create a starry background.

Step 9:

Duplicate the star-layer and use gaussian-blur (~10px).

Step 10:

Create a new layer (at the top again). Take the same brush (brush-size: ~100px) and form it like it is shown in the picture.

Step 11:

Duplicate the layer and form a crescent. Use Crtl+E to merge the layers. (Don’t worry, the other layers are just hidden.)

Step 12:

Place the crescent on the tip of your object and create a new layer. Then use the a pencilbrush (~40px) and draw another crescent above the other one (see picture).

Step 13:

Use gaussain-blur (~9px)

Step 14:

Duplicate the drawn-crescent and paint it orange (Crtl+U ; Color: 16 ; Saturation: 100 ; Brightness: -50).

Step 15:

Set the layer on ‘color dogde’.

Step 16:

Duplicate the layer and use gaussain-blur (~20px) and set the oppacity of the layer to ~90%.

Step 17:

To add some more color duplicate the brush-layer (first brush) and paint it yellow (Crtl+U ; Color: 45 ; Saturation: 100 ; Brightness: -40). Move the layer 3px to the right and to the bottom. Then erase the marked areas with the eraser (soft pencil, ~100px).

Step 18:

Create a new layer below the object-layer and take the pencilbrush (~120px). Choose an orange color and draw a bold line. Then choose a blue color and draw a line below the orange one (Attention: Both lines are in the same layer!).

Step 19:

Set the layer on ‘overlay’.

Step 20:

Create a new layer (at the top again), fill it black and set it on ‘color dogde’ (It should look like nothing has happened). Take a soft pencilbrush (~80px) and click on the marked areas (foreground color has to be white!). Set the layer’s oppacity to ~80%.

Step 21:

Final result