Aged, distressed look
I have been working on aging or distressing some photos recently and thought I would post this example. There are some good presets in lightroom for an antique look but these rely on usually lowering the saturation of a photo, adding a brownish tone and a vignette. It is a reasonable effect but to take it a step further you need texture. This image has 3 textures layered in various blend modes to give a decent aged effect. I also reduced the saturation with a Hue/Sat adjustment layer. The textures can be anything from old brickwork, woods or metals. The texture used in this one was from an old wall with decaying plaster.
Hi Pete – did you create this in LR? I am trying to find if it is possible to acheive this look in LR only without PS.
Hi Ben,
Thanks for the comment. Unfortunately the key to this look I have found is the overlaying of textures which at present cannot be done in lightroom. There are a lot of vintage presets for lightroom and now with the addition of grain in LR3 you can do a reasonable job but I find putting a texture layer on top in photoshop and playing with the blend mode and opacity really set this off. A technique used quite a lot by the wedding photographer jesh de rox. Thanks again for reading.
Hi Pete – you can do this really easily now with Elements 9.