I've got a photography themed tutorial where we'll be using Photoshop to create a cool
photo effect that mimics some of the authentic effects photographers used to create back
in the analogue days of photography, before the days of digital processing.
The two effects we'll be combining are split toning and the matte look, which are really
trendy styles at the moment thanks to filters such as Instagram, but you can also see these
kind of effects all over fashion shots and hipster style culinery food photos.
In the olden days before you plugged your camera into your computer and downloaded your
images, you had to process your camera film using various chemicals in a darkroom. Before
Photographers could mess around with Photoshop Blending Modes they would experiment with
chemical toners to produce different colours, which is where all the popular digital cross
processing effects come from.
Other effects also used to come from using different films and paper. One effect we'll
be mimicking in this tutorial is the washed out low contrast look from printing onto matte
paper, but that's enough of the history lesson for now, let's get started and I'll talk through
the effects as we go.
Open up your chosen image in Adobe Photoshop. The easiest way to produce this matte effect
is by adjusting the Levels. Add a Levels Adjustment Layer by selecting it from the icon at the
bottom of the layer panel. This will allow us to non-destructively edit the image, unlike
the standard Image > Adjustment > Levels tool.
Drag the shadows handle of the bottom slider inwards to reduce the contrast of the image
and weaken the blacks to give the photo a cool washed out look. Then darken the shadows
by dragging the normal shadows and midtone handles inwards on the main histogram.
With just this one step we've already created a popular effect that is used on those trendy
high fashion ads, but let's make a few more tweaks.
Now, black and White photography was much more common than colour photography, and it
also creates much more moody photos. Add a Black and White adjustment layer to take out
all the colour while retaining the contrast of the image.
One of the most popular analog effect is split toning, where the print is bleached with a
sepia toner, which gives that classic vintage brown look, followed by selenium, which affects
the darker shadows to give the image a harsh mix of bluey greys and orangey yellow tones.
The result is a dejected mood which works great with photographs of abandoned ruins
or any scene you want to have a gloomy feeling.
To create this effect, add a Curves Adjustment Layer in your Photoshop document.
Change the drop down menu to the Blue channel, then we want to increase the blues in the
shadows but decrease them in the highlights. So grab the start and end points of the curves
graph and move them upwards for the shadows but downwards for the highlights.
The highlights are looking a little bit too greeny now, so switch to the Green channel
and bring down the amount of green in the highlights by adjusting that curves graph.
The effect is almost there, but it looks a little bit too purple, so switch to the Red
channel and bring down the red in the shadows to move the hue slightly further towards blue.
Finally, no analog style photo effect would be complete without a touch of film grain.
Go to Layer > New > Layer and change the Mode to Overlay, then check the Fill with 50% grey
option.
Go to Filter > Noise > Add Noise and configure the settings to 10%, then check the Gaussian
and Monochromatic.
So just those few steps finishes off the washed out matte split toning effect in Photoshop.
If you enjoyed this tutorial I'd really appreciate a thumbs up on YouTube to help spread the
word. Otherwise you can see more by subscribing either on YouTube or on my website at spoon.graphics
for plenty more design tutorials for Photoshop and Illustrator.
If you make use of this tutorial yourself I'd love to see your results on Twitter to
@chrisspooner, otherwise thanks for watching and I'll catch you all later.