The fab Hipstamatic iPhone photos I’ve been seeing all over the place got me hankering for a bit of that retro 70s look. My childhood is recorded in sun faded, white bordered squares. Back far enough it’s recorded in sun faded, white bordered, black and white squares.
For Tara’s Gallery this week I have taken 6 of my favourite photos of the boys from the last month or so and I’ve recreated “the look” using a variety of Photoshop filters, layers and overlays.
First I added a cross processed layer. I experimented with Totally Rad Actions, Pioneer Woman Actions and Alien Skin until I got a colour balance I liked. My favourite recipe turned out to be Alien Skin Agfa Optima at low transparency overlaying Alien Skin Lomo Konica Film. You can cross-process manually quite easily and you don’t need an expensive photo manipulation programme to do it, download Gimp for free and follow this excellent tutorial which also covers colour popping.
As far as I know that’s about as much as can be done in Gimp since it doesn’t support layers, but no doubt once you get familiar with the programme you can work without layers adjusting colour balance and brightness to get just the right “retro look” you’re after.
So back to Photoshop, next I added three colour layers, peach, blue and pink and changed the layer blending options to Pin Light. I bumped them all down pretty low, 15-25% transparency and tried displaying different combinations of the three layers, it depends on your photo really.
Once I got all these layers balanced out to my liking I added a Levels adjustment layer and slid the mid point fairly far to the right to darken it all down a bit. I then added a layer mask and using a large fuzzy brush unevenly distributed the Levels adjustment to add a bit of interest to the shading.
I then ran Pioneer Womans Boost action (also free).
Finally a bit of TTV. Well fake TTV. It stands for Through The Viewfinder and real TTV involves taking a photo through the viewfinder of another camera. Which I’m not even going to think about doing! Fake TTV involves simply finding a TTV layer (this Flickr Group is full of them) and overlaying it over your photo. You can try various blending options but Multiply seems to work best.
And that’s it. A mix of early photography and retro 70s stuck in box and had red wine spilt on them photos.
Incidentally the sun is in Paul’s eyes – he’s not crying!
My boys for The Gallery. Can’t wait to see more.
mrsw.wordpress.com 
i know nothing of these techniques but like the results. great photos!
Thank you Claire – I learnt virtually everything online – photography communities really are the bees-knees.
Gorgeous as usual, thanks for the tips will be back to link to those sites Gimp and Pioneer woman’s. It must take so long? Great effects though. :0)
GIMP is fab – I had it on this machine but I’ve run out of space (too many fofos). I need to archive then maybe do some GIMP tutorials or something, it’s free after all 🙂
Oh! What a fab set of photos!! I keep meaning to say”That one is my favourite” and then I see the next one… great job on the presentation!!!
lol! Yeah they are shown here in the order I did them and I think I was sort of getting the hang of it by the last one 🙂
These are fabulous. I love the frame on the last one.
Yup – the last is usually the best – like the last place you look is always where you find stuff 😉
Love your boys, in awe of your photoshop know how!
My favourite is the last one, but the first 2 get the 70s faded photo look the best.
I thought of scanning some photos of our 1974 holiday in Whitley Bay and pretending 🙂
I really must have a go at recreating the scene with the same players then apply “That 70s” look.
Who’d have thunk anything good would come out of the 70s?? (except Genesis….)
What can I say, amazing pictures as always 😉
Think you Mirka 🙂
I love the boys with the tree, my LM often sits with his hands on his eyes waiting for someone to say boo!
Ahh – could be that too – my immediate thought (even tho I knew he was just shading his eyes) is that he looked like he was crying his heart out… could be a peek-a-boo moment though 🙂
lovely – I have spent hours playing with hipstamatic but I’m really not getting the best out of it yet.
I must steal my OHs iPhone and have a go myself one day (I suspect it will frustrate me!)
These are gorgeous!! 🙂
Thank you my dear 🙂
Wow!! What a great job you did with those photos!!
Lovely collection… and lovely men in your life too 😉
Sssshhh – they’ll hear you and get all blaw heided! 🙂
Lovely again…could you be a bit rubbish just once so I could write something else?!;-) I love the hair cut photo, fab!
Oh dear – before without the after? Eeek!
Very clever and very impressive. Love your photos.
CJ xx
Thank you – I think this sort of massive editing you either love or hate, I’m not sure yet… I wouldn’t print them out I don’t think, but they are fun do make.
I love the looks that Hipstamatic app creates too (alas I don’t have an iphone). You’ve done a great job. The photos are fantastic.
Thanks Menna – I don’t have an iPhone either – I’ve tried taking photos with one though and I just wobble! They are so difficult to hold steady when you’re used to a big chunky camera with hand grips.
Alien skin? Blimey!
I did download Gimp a while back but was a bit scared of it and hadn’t the foggiest what to do.
Might have to check out the tutorial and have another go.
GIMP’s good tho I believe there are some free tools that support layers – Photoshop has a free online version – must check that out…
FYI: GIMP does in fact support layers, but not in the same way as PotatoShop – it doesn’t have adjustment layers as such, but you can make amendments to different layers and mask them or blend them in various different ways.
Thanks for the link to the TTV layers – I may use a couple of those myself, ta!
The pictures are really wonderful. I love the one of the 2 boys on the tree branch. I also love Pioneer Woman! Ever read her love story? It is awesome (and her recipes are great too)!!
I have her book – I am a PW groupie
Uh, you sort of lost me on the technique LOL but you do make the most beautiful photos!
Beautiful boys too:-)
Thank you Chelle 🙂
What fabulous photos. Makes me realise how feeble my efforts are (note to self: must try harder).
LCM x
There’s no such thing as a feeble effort!!! 🙂 I only ever share my best shots – if you take enough photos there’s always more “best” shots and I take over 1,000 a week – can you imagine doing that on film? Whoa!
I queen the goddess of photoshop! Fab.
Yup – I am a photoshopographer 🙂
Fab photos!
Cheers m’dear!
Lovely pics. My favourite is definitely the tree one.
Thank you for the Gimp link (I know you didn’t put it up just for me but I’m going to pretend you did). I downloaded the Gimp a while ago and haven’t really played with it that much (bit intimidated if I’m honest). I’m babysitting for a friend on Saturday so I will be taking my laptop and a note of that website with me.
Actually you did remind me of GIMP when you mentioned it so I thought I’d go look see if it could cross-process – cross-processing is very addictive – go play with it – such fun.
wow… I’m going to check them all out now!
If we don’t here from you in a week we’ll send out a search party (so addictive!)
These are just gorgeous I want to go and play with my photos now!
Time sort of warps when you’re editing photos – a Photoshop minute is a bit like a Microsoft minute – it bears no relation to the actual passage of time 🙂
Thanks for all the tips – I love playing with photo editing but have mainly stuck to flickr. Will have to try out your ideas. Really love the photo of the boys hanging off the tree.
Thank you – it’s amazing what we can do with our images now. I have literally trunks full of horrible blurry photos of my older two when they were babies 13/14 years ago – yet ones of me from 40-cough years ago are really not bad. There was a “dark ages” in affordable cameras through the 80s and 90s I think 🙂
FYI: GIMP does in fact support layers, but not in the same way as PotatoShop – it doesn’t have adjustment layers as such, but you can make amendments to different layers and mask them or blend them in various different ways.
Thanks for the link to the TTV layers – I may use a couple of those myself, ta!
Beautiful photos – and thank you so much for the tips!
GIMP fully supports layers. I use it frequently, and have had some images with more than three dozen layers. In fact, it’s more user friendly than layers in photoshop as far as I’m concerned, because of its much more intuitive interface.
There actually should be a “layers” button right among your main buttons across the top. Click it and you’ll get the layers drop down menu.
Found this because I was looking for a way to capture the look of my girlfriend’s hipstamatic app, esp. the John’s lens and the Ina’s 1969 film used together.