Aging Photographs in Adobe Photoshop

So now that we have an image to work with, lets make it look old and worn.

The first step deals with adding the sepia tone to the image. This can be accomplished with minimal steps and is very simple. These initial steps are also the foundation of the remainder of this tutorial.

Bring the image into a new layer and name it "original". Delete everything from the background layer.

Now, desaturate the "original" layer, to change it to black and white. (Ctrl + Shift + U). Now, copy this layer to a new layer, name it "original 2", and set the blending mode to overlay.

Next, adjust the brightness/contrast of your "original 2" layer to your liking. Select Image > Adjust > Brightness/Contrast. (I used brightness +28, contrast +27)

With all of the above done, the next step is to add the sepia tone to your image. Adjust the color balance of your "original 2" layer (Image > Adjust > Color Balance). You can use the settings that I used below:

Your result, depending on the settings you selected, should look similar to this:

Now, the next section will deal with adding some dust & scrathes to the image to make it look a little older. Perhaps even add some grungey stuff in there as well. There are a million and 1 ways to accomplish this, however, I will only go over a few.

The first method is to add some simple scratches to the picture. Create a new layer above your "original 2" layer and name it "scratches". Now, select the Paintbrush tool with a brush 1 pixel diameter. Set your foreground color to white and draw some random lines on your image, similar to below:

To make the scratches blend in with the image and appear a little more natural, drop the opacity of the "scratches" layer to 65% and set the blending mode to Soft Light. You should end up with something similar to this:

To add some dust/dirt, you will need to use some similar steps as are included in my grunge tutorial. Here, I created a new layer above the "scratches" layer, and named it "white grunge".

Using the Paintbrush tool, I set the foreground color to white, and randomly place dust/dirt splotches in the image using various brushes. If you need some brushes, visit my resources section. There are a good number of grunge brushes that can be applied here.