Today I'm going to share the secret behind my Photocopier Machine Actions
and show you the combination of filters that creates a grainy,
high-contrast photocopied look with various dirty toner effect options.
The Photocopier Machine Actions are one component of my Copy Shop Photocopy Effects Kit.
It contains everything you need to recreate the gritty, low-fi aesthetic of
photocopied designs, including broken photocopier textures, gig poster templates, distorted type
effects, paper textures, bonus halftone textures, and those photocopier machine actions which can
apply the effects in today's video in just one click with a range of ready-made presets.
Click the link in the description if you fancy checking it out,
and use the code 20OFF for 20% off.
To create the effect manually, open your chosen image and convert the layer into a
Smart Object so the filters can be applied non-destructively and edited if necessary.
First we need to desaturate the image, so go to
Image > Adjustments > Hue/Saturation. Reduce the saturation value to zero.
The combination of filters we'll be using are in the Filter Gallery,
so go to the Filter menu and choose Filter Gallery.
Under the Texture category, choose Grain.
Change the Grain Type dropdown to Enlarged,
but stick around to see what effects the other options can achieve.
You can then play with the Intensity and Contrast sliders to find a good result.
The Intensity slider determines the amount of grain, while the
Contrast slider affects the exposure of the image.
Find a balance between a nice gritty low-fi look and being completely blown out.
Next, click the new effect icon and choose Film Grain from under the Artistic category.
The Grain effect alone does a good job,
but the addition of Film Grain too gives you finer control over the result.
The Grain slider gives the image a kind of matte look by brightening
the blacks. You'll want to keep this towards the lower end of the scale.
The Highlight Area controls how blown out the image looks,
while the Intensity slider allows you to bring down the brightness.
If you zoom in and look closely you'll see the grain is made up
of colourful dots, so we need to desaturate them.
You could click and drag the Filter Gallery effects underneath the Hue and Saturation,
but this affects the appearance of the effect.
Instead you can just apply another Hue and Saturation effect on top to preserve
those settings you'll just carefully configured.
Let's take a look at some of those other settings that generate alternative effects.
Remember, first convert the layer to a Smart Object, then desaturate with Hue and Saturation.
Open the Filter Gallery, which will have the previously used effects already configured.
This time change the Grain Type of the Grain effect to
Horizontal instead of Enlarged. This produces a low-toner streaky effect.
Adjust the Intensity value to control the amount of streaky lines,
and the Contrast slider to determine how dark or bright the image should be.
The Film Grain effects can be adjusted too to suit this new image.
Here's a third image to show another combination of filters, converted to
a smart object, desaturated and filter gallery applied.
The Vertical Grain Type option applies similar streaky lines, but vertically!
With this image the Highlight Area and Intensity sliders in
the Grain options help to bring back the details with a low-contrast look,
rather than everything being completely blown out with stark contrast.
A slightly heavier dose of Grain Intensity adds more streaky lines for a grungier look.
Let's also add some paper textures to enhance the effect. There are a
few paper effect textures included in my Copy Shop kit, but any old paper texture will do.
Copy and paste the texture over your image, use CMD+T for Transform to scale and position it into
place, then change the blending mode to Multiply to allow the underlying layer to show through.
The Folded paper textures are a good option for images with an overall darker appearance,
since the white crease lines will show up better,
Set this texture to lighten instead to make the black background transparent,
leaving the crease lines for an old folded poster look.
The Poster Paper texture from my kit has a kind of rolled poster effect.
Set this one to Multiply and reduce the opacity to tone down its appearance.
As a finishing touch, a gradient map can be used to inject some colour into the effect.
Choose a dark grey to avoid the hard contrast that's generated from the
default black to white gradient, but don't go too light or it will wash out the image.
The other end of the gradient is where you can get creative with
colours. Something subtle like a tinge of pale yellow or green creates a cool effect.
Alternatively you could go for a brighter purple
Or even an intense red.