5
Edit the gradient
What’s happening here is that Photoshop Elements is
mapping different brightnesses of colour to the greyscale shades
in your image. Use the white and brown squares below the
gradient in the editor to set where the gradient begins and ends
- how much white you get, and what the darkest shade of brown
is. Tick the Reverse box in the Gradient Map pop-up if things that
should be dark are actually light, and vice versa.
6 Choose your colours
If you click on the coloured squares beneath the gradient
and select them, you can use an eyedropper within the image
to sample a colour, which then becomes either the darkest or
lightest colour in the image, depending which one you chose. If
you can’t see the colour you want, click on the Color block at the
left, and you’ll be able to choose a colour from the usual
Elements Color Picker window. Click ‘OK’ when you’re happy.
7 Blend your layers
Because these are layers, we can blend them into one
another. Choose the Gradient Map layer at the top of the stack,
and try different blend modes (using the drop-down menu at the
top left of the Layers palette) to see what difference they make.
We found that the Soft Light or Color modes gave a very good
effect, but what works best will depend on the photo you’ve
chosen. You can keep changing these modes as much as you like.
8
Add effects
You now have a sepia photo, but to make it look really old
it needs a few (optional) extra flourishes. The first is grain – a
recreation of the chemical crystals that make up the image on a
printed photo. Elements makes this easy, but with a caveat: it will
alter your original Background layer. If this matters, duplicate the
layer first. Otherwise, select the Background layer, head up to the
Filter menu, and choose Noise > Add Noise.FILTER MENU
You’ll find all the
filters we use here.28 |^ |^ May 2019