May 28
22 min. to read
Everything seems to come back every decade, from TV shows to new fashion collections. That's why the vintage aesthetic is also popular in the photo industry. Whether celebrities or social media influencers try to publish vintage photos. You may be wondering how to make your pictures look vintage now. Below you will find detailed tips on this topic. Even if you are an amateur, you will get what you want.
Modern photo editors provide a wide range of special effects that transform an ordinary image into a work of art. Subtle effects are used to enhance image qualities and deliver natural-looking results. Artistic effects in digital photos are used to create a specific style such as oil painting, crayon drawing, fantasy, film noir, or watercolors. A vintage look preserves the natural feel of an image but adds a temporal dimension: it transforms a new digital image into an old, analog photograph. Now it is very easy to make a photo look old with an editor.
Photographers often use a vintage style for portraits, wedding photos, still life shots, and architectural images. The artificial aging process enhances the composition and helps to create a credible story. Besides, the vintage look flatters the skin and hides imperfections. If you don't know how to make your picture look vintage, then read the following tips and create a real masterpiece.
Why should a new picture look like an old one? Because artificial aging adds a new dimension to composition and allows you to locate your visual story not only in space but in time. A vintage effect is used for complex compositions that create full narratives. It creates a special mood that may be romantic (for wedding photo sessions or vow renewal portraits), nostalgic (for pictures of old buildings or objects), or dramatic (for pictures featuring age, destruction, or sorrow). Before learning how to make a picture look vintage, it is very important for us to consider the main characteristics of this style.
Grainy, muted shades, deep shadows - magic! The era of film photography and vinyl records beckons with its atmosphere. But don't rush off to the flea market to buy a vintage camera. The same retro effect can be achieved in photo editors and with the help of filters in smartphone apps.
The term “vintage photos” refers to a number of styles, including film photography, ferrotypes, black and white photography, and others. Vintage decoration is the process of giving a modern digital photograph a vintage look and feel. Such digital filters mimic the effects of shooting on a film camera.
Today, these effects have become relevant because of the nostalgic atmosphere and timeless aesthetic they bring to photographs. Superb retro effects transform modern photographs into images from a very different era, changing their mood, atmosphere, or emotional message. Explore the options on offer and find the best fit for your work. Want to recreate a beautifully aged look? Here are some simple tips.
If you don't know how to make a photo look vintage, the simplest way is to convert it to black and white. You can also try experimenting with different styles or adjusting the color sliders within each style to alter the photo's appearance. Use the photo editor's sliders, moving them to the right to brighten specific areas and to the left to darken them. This technique allows you to customize the lighting and contrast, enhancing the vintage effect.
Give your photo a vintage look by adding some visual noise with special photo editing tools. Modern image editors powered by artificial intelligence offer dozens of features. Even a little noise will give the image an authentic vintage feel. To create vintage photos, you need to work with sliders of tone, contrast, and color. There is no one recipe for image editing. Experiment with new photo effects by using different tools and choosing the most appropriate ones. You can pick up a new combination of settings that you can use to create your own vintage filter.
The brightness of old photos changes and fades over time. You can also adjust the hue, saturation, and color balance. Try a few options and perfect the one that best suits the subject of your photo work. Try to recreate the effect as if the color had been washed out by time. Since all photos are unique, there is no one-size-fits-all filter. Instead, experiment with each color editing tool to find the perfect combination for your image.
Add another correction layer and choose a special photo filter to give your photo a special look. This option is available in the Adobe Lightroom image editor. This will allow you to apply a vintage color wash, such as sepia, which gives the image a warm reddish-brown hue. You can also experiment with other color-blur options, such as cool blue or somber green. Just move the slider in the right way.
Of course, this is one of those options that we think of first. This variant adds a slight shadow effect and makes the image look even less perfect and more like a decrepit or damaged vintage photo. This is also a versatile option if you didn't know how to make a picture look old before. It is very easy to use and can be combined with other photo effects or filters.
Remember that older images look less contrasty or slightly darker, so move the sliders in the photo editor settings to give the image the desired level of contrast and brightness. It’s also easy to achieve, even if you are a novice photographer and haven't mastered all the editing tools perfectly. You can get more creative here or take inspiration from famous photographers to get the nostalgic effect you want.
If you want to get the effect of a photo you recently found in the attic vintage is to use aged paper for the background. It looks very beautiful. In the gallery of some photo editors, such as Canva, you can find paper even with antique seals and slightly frayed edges which give the photo the texture you want. Follow the same principle - place the old paper on the background, load your photo on top and adjust the transparency. Now you will have far fewer questions about how to make pictures look old.
Simulate black and white film by reducing color saturation completely and increasing contrast to create the effect of an old photo. You have a wonderful opportunity to experiment with both online image editors and installable software. Add some grit for an old photo effect - use a picture with film in the background. Also, adjust the color. You can search the internet for examples of newspaper clippings and pictures of paper with ripped edges to complement the design. You can make a vintage birthday card in this style!
Do you want to create something original? Try to use several pictures for overlaying. For a retro photo, you can use a background with grit and adjust the transparency of the main picture. On top of that, apply a lightly ghosted film and adjust the transparency as well. You can use a ready template or add noise by yourself. Load your picture into the editor and change the settings to get the perfect old photo effect.
Choose your image wisely, as not all images match the vintage look. You can start with a photo taken in black and white that already has dramatic, aged aesthetics or with a color photo with a suitable subject.
Luminar Neo provides full control over the editing process to make photos look vintage. It works with layers, masks, and it allows for selective editing. You can create a vintage look from scratch using only Luminar Neo’s presets and adjustments. But a faster way to make your photo look vintage is to use Luminar Neo Presets, designed by professional photographers to recreate the most popular photography styles.
If you choose to create your own vintage look, you’ll have to transform the image according to the characteristics listed above. Make sure you create a new layer at each step of your editing process to make a picture look old. Luminar Neo allows you to fine-tune each layer separately and preview the result of each step. Use the Before/After preview tool to keep track of your adjustments.
Check the result below!
How to make photos look vintage with a modern photo editor with an easy-to-understand interface? Presets are kits of adjustments that automatically create a specific style and add atmosphere to a picture. Luminar Neo offers more than 80 built-in Presets divided into categories: Street, Landscape, Portrait, Artistic, Black & White, Cinematic, Travel, and more. In addition, you can download more Signature Presets from the Luminar Neo Marketplace for making photos look old.
If you don’t want to spend time working with layers and filters, you can make a photo look vintage by applying the Vintage Preset from the Dramatic category. After applying a Preset, you can see in the right panel what filters were applied and adjust their settings according to your artistic vision. The Luminar Neo Vintage Preset uses the Dramatic, Color Styles (LUT), and Film Grain filters from the Creative category and the Vignette filter from the Essentials category to make photos look old.
After you’ve created your unique vintage look, you can save it for future use or apply the same set of adjustments to multiple images at once.
You can also use Luminar Neo Presets for black-and-white conversion. There’s a customized black-and-white conversion for each type of photography (landscape, portrait, aerial, etc.), which guarantees natural-looking results.
Well, now you really know how to make pictures look vintage, it's not complicated at all. It is important that the vintage of the photo is reflected not only in the processing but also in the content. Modern buildings and machinery will not look vintage no matter how you process them. You can take vintage-looking photos of nature, buildings, or cars. Portrait shots can also be made vintage, as long as the appearance of the model corresponds to the times you want to convey in your work.
Modern photos can also be done as old-style photos. Studio photos taken with professional lighting and modern scenery look very interesting in a vintage treatment, but they convey a very different mood from really vintage shots.
Creating a vintage look is popular, as it adds meaning and depth to a visual story. It’s also easy to achieve, as many photo editors offer presets you can apply in seconds. But to get high-quality results and subtle transformations for old-style pictures, you need to choose an editor that works with layers and gives you full control over the editing process. It’s good to have smart and automatic tools, but it’s even better to fine-tune each adjustment by hand and create your unique vintage picture effect.