Adding years to a photo is useful in several situations. Maybe you’re matching recent family photos
to those taken long ago or perhaps you’re designing a vintage ad, book cover, or event poster. In this
column, you’ll learn how to use filters and custom brushes to fade, streak, and damage a photo—
all without harming the original. Read on!AGING A PHOTO
ADDING STREAKS
The first step is to discolor the photo so it looks faded,
and then make it look streaked. An easy way to do this
is to use a couple of filters: Cloud and Motion Blur.Step One: Open the image in Photoshop. (If you’re
starting in Lightroom, select the photo’s thumbnail and
choose Photo>Edit In>Edit In Adobe Photoshop CC
2019.) If you want to follow along with the photo used
here, you may download the JPEG preview for free or
license the full-resolution version from Adobe Stock by
clicking here. To download the preview image, log
in with your Adobe ID, and click the Save to Library
button. Double-click the image in the Libraries panel
(Window>Libraries) to open it in Photoshop.Step Two: Add a new layer on top of your image on
which you’ll run the filter to create streaks. Press Com-
mand-Shift-N (PC: Ctrl- Shift-N), and in the New Layer
dialog that opens, type “streaks” into the Name field.
Choose Hard Light from the Mode pop-up menu, enter
50% in the Opacity field, and then click OK. You can
adjust the opacity later using the Opacity setting at the
top of the Layers panel, although it’s handy to make
this layer slightly see-through now so you can see what
the streaks look like while you’re making them.Step Three: The Clouds filter mixes the Foreground
and Background colors (at the bottom of your Toolbar,
circled here). Let’s set those colors to white and brown.
To do that, click on the Foreground color swatch (the
one on top), and in the Color Picker that opens, choose
white, and click OK. Now click on the Background color
swatch and pick a medium brown. In this example, I
entered a0724c into the Hex # field (also circled).LESASNIDER
Beginners’ Workshop
©Adobe Stock/Christian Müller> PHOTOSHOP USER>^ AUGUST 2019[ 68 ]