Have every post delivered to your inbox and get access to hundreds of useful design freebies.
As always, this is the final image that we’ll be creating:
Copy and paste in this photo of a guitarist, resizing it to 600px width.
Duplicate this layer and go to filter>blur>gaussian blur. Apply a 3.5 strength gaussian blur and then change this layer’s opacity to 60%. This should nicely soften your image:
Now open your adjustments panel, and apply a color balance adjustment layer (settings below):
Now apply a second adjustment layer (photo filter) – see the settings below:
Now paste in this great paper texture.
Go to image>adjustments>desaturate to grayscale it, and then apply the levels settings shown below:
Reduce your paper texture layer’s opacity to 10%:
Create a new layer called ‘image border’. Then fill this with whatever color you want. In your layer’s palette reduce this layer’s FILL opacity to 0%, leaving it’s main opacity at 100%. This means that your color used to fill your canvas will not be visible, but any blending options and layer styles will be!
Then apply a 10px stroke (position: inner), opacity: 20%, to create a nice border to your image:
Create a new layer called ‘radial gradients’. Use your radial gradient tool (ranging from various bright colors to transparent) and create some highlights over your image (see below):
Then change this layer’s blend mode to ‘overlay’ and reduce it’s opacity to 15%:
Create a new layer called ‘white bar’. Using your marquee tool or rectangle shape tool create a white bar spanning across the bottom of your image.
Then reduce this layer’s FILL opacity to 50%.
Go to blending options and apply a 1px white stroke effect. This should create a nice subtle area to place text:
Now add some text over your bar area. I chose to apply a very high kerning setting to space my text out nicely.
Then I added a black outer glow blending option to my white text to add some subtle emphasis to it:
You can view the final outcome below. I hope that you enjoyed this tutorial and would love to hear your feedback on the techniques and outcome:
Tom is the founder of PSDFAN. He loves writing tutorials, learning more about design and interacting with the community. On a more interesting note he can also play guitar hero drunk with his teeth.
Do you know the basic tools in Photoshop but feel that your work is still looking average? Join our creative community at FanExtra and get the direction you need to take your work to the next level.
Very nice effect
This is good blog message, I will keep this in mind. If you add more video and pictures because it helps understanding
thx, I like it. Yours tutorials are usefull.
Great tutorial and a really nice vintage effect. I always like to learn new techniques to make images and photos more interesting. Thanks for sharing this with us.
Not looking vintage:(
Nice tutorial, I will use this technique for sure in my upcoming tutorial =]. Thanks for sharing
could anyone tell how to get those options, vat i have to download to change settings.
it’s really amazing
Very nice effect Thank you