How to Make Your Photos Look Retro and Vintage in Photoshop

Click the half black-half white circle (Adjustment Layers) and choose Curves. Click the dialog box labeled Channel, and choose Red. Click on the red curve (line) in the middle of the first quadrant, and drag it diagonally towards the top left a small distance. What you are doing is adding red to the highlights of the photo. Click on the red curve (line) in the middle of the third quadrant, and drag it diagonally towards the bottom right a small distance. What you are doing is subtracting red from the shadows of the photo.

Click the dialog box labeled Channel, and choose Green. Click on the green curve (line) in the middle of the first quadrant, and drag it diagonally towards the top left a small distance. What you are doing is adding green to the highlights of the photo. Click on the green curve (line) in the middle of the third quadrant, and drag it diagonally towards the bottom right a small distance. What you are doing is subtracting green from the shadows of the photo.

Click the dialog box labeled Channel, and choose Blue. Click on the blue curve (line) in the middle of the first quadrant, and drag it diagonally towards the bottom right small distance. What you are doing is subtracting blue from the highlights of the photo. Click on the blue curve (line) in the middle of the third quadrant, and drag it diagonally towards the top left a small distance. What you are doing is adding blue to the shadows of the photo.

Tweaking the Curves is a completley asthetic process. If you want to add or subtract a certain color from a certain part of the photo to achieve your vision, do so here. Adding Red = Subtracting Cyan and visa versa. Adding Green = Subtracting Magenta and visa versa. Adding Blue = Subtracting Yellow and visa versa. When you are done tweaking the Curves, press OK.

Click the little white rectangle next to the Curves Adjustment Layer and brush black over parts that you didn't want to change. Brush white to re-change the parts you brushed black. Use grays or different opacitys of the black brush to slightly take away changes.

If you feel you need to, create a Brightness/Contrast Adjustment Layer and add/subtract brightness and contrast to your liking. I usually brighten the photo up a tad and add some contrast.

If you feel you need to, create a Gradient Map Adjustment Layer and choose a gradient. I like to use the Violet-Orange, Violet-Green-Orange, Medium Spectrum (Rainbow). What a Gradient Map does is that it maps a gradient to the different amounts of light in the image. Set the Gradient Map layer to Soft Light. You can experiment with other blending modes, but Soft Light will almost always be your best bet. Experiment with opacity to find a good improvement that isn't too overpowering. Like we did before, fine tune the adjustment layer by brushing on the layer mask.

Enjoy your results! I hope you learned something from this tutorial.