In this tutorial you'll learn how to give your photos a darkroom look by adding light leaks in Photoshop.
Click on the Adjustment Layer button at the bottom of your layers panel, and choose Hue/Saturation.
The Hue/Saturation layer will appear above your photo layer.
Click on the layer to make the Hue/Adjustment settings appear.
Take the Saturation down to -20, and take the Lightness up to +15.
This dulling of the photo will have given it a faded look.
Next click on the New Layer button at the bottom of the layers panel.
The new layer should appear above the Hue/Saturation layer, you can name it 'light leak 1? by double clicking on the text.
With this layer selected choose the Marquee tool and make a rectangular selection over the left side of the photo.
Next got to Edit>Fill, and for the Contents choose Color, then select a bright red.
This will have filled your selection with red, and you can now go to Select>Deselect, to remove the selection.
Next go to Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur and take the Radius up to 130 pixels.
Now click on the blending modes dropdown list and choose Color Dodge, then set the Opacity to around 90%.
This leaves you with a red light leak across the left of your photo.
Next we'll add some yellow.
Add a new layer above the first light leak layer, then use the Marquee tool to draw a rectangular selection about half way across the first one.
Again, give it a Gaussian Blur set to 130 pixels.
Set the layer's blending mode to Color Dodge and the Opacity to 90%.
Next we'll add a different light leak, this time with a streaked effect.
Choose the Oval shape tool and draw a vertical red oval on the right side of the image.
This time got to Filter>Blur>Motion Blur and set the Angle to 90 degrees, and the Distance to the maximum amount.
This will have vertically blurred the shape, but made it loose some visibility.
So duplicate the layer, then right click again and choose merge layers.
Change the layer's blending mode to Color Dodge, and it's Opacity to 60%.
Next give it a Gaussian Blur set to 8 pixels.
Finally we'll add some dust to the photo. You can find some great dust textures here.
Once downloaded, drop the texture into your document above all the other layers, and change the layer's blending mode to Screen, and it's Opacity to 90%.
Below are a couple more examples of the effects that can be created using this technique.
