One of the proposed subjects for the next Experiment is restoring an old photo. That's a very valuable skill to learn and practice, but I got to thinking about the reverse: How about taking a contemporary image and making it look like an oooolllldddd image that's been through hell over the years?
Here's my attempt:
Given this original: I made it look like a tintype from the mid-1800's: Because photos were not sensitive to red light, I darkened the reds and brightened the blues when doing the B&W conversion. I also added a vignette to simulate the light fall-off of the lenses of the time. I also reduced the contrast and made sure there were no pure whites to simulate the effect of viewing a tintype by reflected light. The rest was piling on various blotches, wrinkles, and other "distressed" effects. I only "cheated" by using the KPT "Lightning" plugin to create the scratched surface.
Anyone else have a photo that they distressed?
