How to Create A Vintage Black and White Portrait in Photoshop

Have you ever tried to photograph a black and white portrait, but had trouble getting the results that you were looking for out of camera? Maybe you have played around in Lightroom, or used a simple adjustment layer in Photoshop to convert your image to black and white and adjusted the color channels, but the results were just not dramatic enough for the look that you wanted to achieve. In this tutorial, Andrei Oprinca shows you how to create a dramatic, faded, vintage-looking black and white portrait using Photoshop.

Oprinca shows you how to treat the shadows and highlights separately in different layers using the levels adjustment to obtain the right amount of contrast. He goes on to show you how to convert your image to black and white and adjust the color channels to fine-tune your black and white look. He goes even further, showing you an easy way to add grain and texture to your image to give it a faded film look.

Personally, I'm not always a fan of creating "vintage" looking images, mainly because I have seen it overdone way too many times. However, this method is pretty simple and gives you enough control to fie-tune your image and not overdo it. Check out the video and let us know what you think. If you liked the tutorial, you can head over to PSD Box for more Photoshop tutorials. 

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Michael Brown's picture

Michael Brown is a freelance photographer based on the east coast, with a wide variety of photo, video and graphic design experience.

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3 Comments

I think it is completely pointless. The way the levels adjustment layers are used is not explained at all and there are just some random parameters given, again without any explanation. So the first 4 minutes are a waste of time.

Jonas. I just sat through the video it is really great and has lots of tips... but I would agree it is for advanced Photoshop users... there are some techniques here that I have not seen and were a bit mind boggling... he is very good, and this is quite advanced. I think take what you can from here and play with parameters... test stuff... that's how I have learned over the years.

fun tutorial.