The Aging Photo

In this step we'll add some colour to the border surrounding the photo.

Go down to the [Layers] panel and create a new layer by clicking on the [Create a New Layer] button. Drag the newly created layer under the layer containing the photo.

Set your foreground colour to #F9F1E5 and using the Paint Bucket tool fill the new layer with the foreground colour.

The border looks a little too perfect for an old photo, so let's add a little bit of discoloration.

Move back down to the [Layers] panel, click the [Create new fill or adjustment layer] , select [Hue/Saturation] and adjust the settings roughly in accordance with what I have used.

Now let's adjust the exposure of the image by once again clicking on the [Create new fill or adjustment layer] and select [Exposure].

Adjust the settings of the Exposure adjustment layer, as follows, to darken the image

At the moment the overall photo is looking a little too dark. What we need to do now is to adjust the [Exposure] layer so that it only affects the border of the photo. To do this, firstly, make sure the [Clipping mask] for the [Exposure] adjustment layer is selected.

Select the [Brush] tool and in the [Brushes] panel increase the size of the brush's diameter and reduce the hardness down to 0.

Click the [Other Dynamics] tab and set the [Opacity Control] to [Pen Pressure].

The photo is still in too good a condition to pass off as an old photo so to help overcome this we'll add some scratches and imperfections to its surface. [Create a new layer] and drag it to the top of the [Layers panel]. Set the foreground and background colors to their default state (SHIFT + D) and the switch them around so that the white is in the foreground and black is in the background.

Now, using the [Paint Bucket] tool, fill the new layer with the foreground colour (white).

Add some noise to this layer by going [F ilter>Noise>Add Noise]. Set the noise level to about 38% and make sure the distribution is set to [Gaussian] and that the [Monochromatic] check box is ticked.

With the help of the [M agic Wand] tool, select and delete random parts of this layer till you get something that looks very similar to the image below.

Getting looks old....

Set the layer's [Blending mode] to [Overlay] and turn down its [Opacity] to around 36%.

The image below shows roughly how your photo should be looking at this stage of the tutorial

Let's degrade the surface even further by adding even more scratches. The scratches that we will be adding in this step will be far more subtle than the scratches add in the previous step. This will help blend the image together a whole lot better.

In the [Layers] panel [Create a new layer] and drag it to the top of the list. Set the foreground colour to #D9C3A9 and using the [Paint Bucket] tool, fill the new layer with the foreground color.

Go to [Filter>Texture>Grain] and add some grain to the layer using the settings below.

Set the layer's [Blending mode] to [Softlight] and turn down its [Opacity] to around 43%.

With any luck your photo should look very similar to the image.

In this step we're going to bleed the perimeter of the photo so as to remove the clean cut edge that exists between the photo and its border.

With the photo layer selected, use [Rectangular Marquee Tool] to select an area that is just slightly smaller than the size of the photo.

Inverse the selection by either pressing [Shift+Ctrl+I] or by going [Select>Inverse].

In this last step we're going to add the final touches to the photo by applying a jagged edge to its border.

Add another 20 pixels to the height and width of the canvas by using the [Image>Canvas Size] method that was mentioned in step 1.

Go to the [Layers] panel, right click on the layer containing the border and click [Select Pixels]. Doing this creates a selection box around the border.