What a great idea for a thread.
Hats off to those who have gone before; here's my effort at something of a mildly gritty, antique look.
1. Slight crop to move subject left and get a bit closer.
2. A bit of curves adjustment to get the face a bit brighter (judging from the end result, though, should have paid a bit more attention here -- oh well, jmadigan has taken us all to school re levels and curves adjustments).
3. Orton effect, followed by a bit of desaturation to bring the colours back down a bit.
4. Duplicate background, convert to BW (I just desaturated for this) and then tint with sepia. Blend this layer on either hard or soft light (i forget).
5. Add film grain, and paste the fake through-the-lens frame into a new layer, blended on darken only.
Somewhere in there I lightened the eyes a little bit too, by making a duplicate layer, lightening with curves, then masking transparent and painting the eyes back in.
I work in Gimp, but I think this will translate well enough. Most (all?) of these steps were cribbed from 3rd Foundation over at flickr --
http://www.flickr.com/photos/3rdfoundation
EL
