Realejo

[rodrigo]

Realejo is the name in Portuguese for this type of organ, not sure how it's called in English..

Since this has such romantic and antique feel already, I tried to make it look like a very old picture, with marks of cup on top, a weird piece of hair that appeared somehow, lots of noise, and the organ with a desaturated patch. I can't really put every step here, but for those marks of cup I found an image of a white piece of paper with those marks (someone scanned and put on Google, go figure), then I added it as a layer and set the blending mode to color burn. Same for the hair.

For that whitish desaturared patch on the organ itself, I created a layer with a white gradient and blended with the soft light option.

Mostly trial-and-error, I am a Photoshop newbie trying to have fun with it while the trial doesn't expire!

Before:



After:



If someone wants more specific details of the "procedure", just ask.

[timkoo]

great job
IMO, the hair is a bit distracting, have you tried any of the other blending options?
I find lighten or multiply works decently (turning opacity down)
I would like to see more contrast in the organ too, it seems a little flat.

[linkerjpatrick]

I agree, the hair is unneeded. I think a better effect would be to see some of it faded out or maybe add a bit of grain.

[lissykeeper]

This is a really good job at aging a photo. I don't think the hair is that distracting, but I do think you might consider adding a little noise. Also, I would fade or round the edges of the photo some. Great Job!

[rodrigo]

Thanks for the suggestions, everyone. After "sleeping over it" I see lots of things that could be improved, but it was a funny project to learn a bit of Photoshop, for sure

One thing I didn't manage to do was to add some old-style, dented borders to it, or maybe some marks of tape, as if it were taped on some album for half a century.

Now, if I ever learn to go the other way around (from a very old crappy BW photo to one that looks brand new), and in perfect colors, I would be rich

[southernbelle]

I love this pp. The sepia, aged look goes so well with the subject of the photo. I really didn't even notice the hair until it was pointed out/

[rodrigo]

Coincidentally there's a post at Photojojo today pointing to a site that can make such pp work automatically, with quite similar results..may be fun for some, so here's the link: http://photojojo.com/content/websites/age-photos/

[Pshorten]

Thank you so much for sharing this - I'm a PS newbie too and really like the look you got - I must try it out.

[jsanders]

Nice shot. How did you manage to get that sign of a cup on top of it?
Could it be a nice idea to use a sepia effect?

[rodrigo]

Originally Posted by jsanders

Nice shot. How did you manage to get that sign of a cup on top of it?
Could it be a nice idea to use a sepia effect?

You just need to find an image that has those marks (for instance, google for it), then you add that image as a new layer, and blend it with the layer below (that has the photo) by right-clicking on the cupmark layer, selecting "blending options" and choosing the mode "color burn". There are other modes there that work too, you can try and see how it goes.

Then you adjust the opacity of the layer until it looks the way you want.

I didn't use sepia directly but I changed it to B&W and then adjusted the hue until I got the color I wanted.