I think it’s safe to assume most of you no longer have “wet” darkrooms. In Photoshop, you can create a nostalgic “wet” darkroom look in just a few quick steps. The old fashioned, faded, sepia look can add a timeless, antique appearance to a single portrait or a whole series of images for a wall hanging or album. Sure you could buy an action, but why not do it yourself to control your own recipe and unique image look.

Step One: Open your image, create an adjustment layer (the half black and white circle on the layers panel) and choose Black and White.

Step Two: Check the Tint box and create the tone you’d like applied to your image (You could create any tone using this technique).

Step Three: Create a new layer (Shift-Command-N or Shift-Ctrl-N) and enter Streaks for the Name, choose Hard Light for the Mode and 85% for Opacity. Stay on this new layer for the remaining steps.

Step Four: Set your Foreground color to a light bround and Background color to white. Choose a light brown for your Foreground color say R:180, G:150, B:100 for example.

Step Five: Choose Filter>Render>Clouds to create a cloud pattern on the image. Click Command-F or Ctrl-F to run different patterns through your new layer.

Step Six: Choose Filter>Blur>Motion Blur to blur the clouds into streaks. Enter 90 for the Angle and drag the Distance slider to the far right. You can play with these numbers but this will give you a verticle streak over the image to make it look like uneven chemical stains.

You’ve now created an old faded sepia image. Play around with your adjustment numbers to get the effect you want and be sure to create an action of your own to easily repeat this look on future images.

Have some fun with this technique and you can create some unique images or image sets for your clients. Let us know how you use this or other techniques to add some pizzaz to your images and increase your sales.