How can I create a faded, cool-toned “old magazine” look in a photo?

Asked 12/28/2022

3 views

2 answers

0

I like the look of a photo that feels faded and slightly overexposed, like something from an old magazine. The image has bright reflections, deep dark areas, and an overall blue/cool color cast. How can I recreate this effect in editing? Is it mainly done in Photoshop, or is it also influenced by the lighting and scene?

Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

Photography Stack Exchange contributor

3y ago

2 Answers

3

(Disclaimer: I am not an expert in photo editing and I may be unaware of some conventional terminology here.)

The most obvious thing about the image, to my eye, is that it has a lot of blue and much less red. Let's look at the histogram of the colors:

histogram

(screenshot from macOS Preview)

We can see that the red channel is almost all very low, and there's a lot of dark red and bright blue (in the histogram per channel — not necessarily saying that any individual pixel has a predominantly red hue!). Let's desaturate the image so we can concentrate on the values:

Desaturated version of image

It looks a lot more normal now, but it still has strong contrasts between almost black and almost white. This may be in part due to editing or film exposure processing, but it is also due to the scene: white walls, white floor, black ceiling, black escalator handrails, black carpets.

If you want to take a photo that you want to eventually look like this, look for a scene with such strongly black and white elements, and very few saturated colors. That will make the photo work better with the editing.


To demonstrate editing, let me try to quickly mimic this effect on an arbitrary photo. Here's a picture I took of some ducks having a nice day (which is an outdoor scene, so it won't work thematically as much as the indoor artifically-lit photo you showed, but anyway):

Normal-color image of ducks

Now, I'll apply the following “Curves” transformation in GIMP, squishing the values towards the low and high end, and reducing the red channel overall:

Curves

This is the result:

enter image description here

It's not as boldly cyan, because of the large amount of green grass, and not nearly as pretty, but I hope it demonstrates what kind of changes (not necessarily the exact ones I did!) can produce the effect you're looking for.

In general, you can make pictures look “old” by making their color and value reproduction worse, in ways which don't quite totally clip. This doesn't always mean pushing towards the extremes — for example, if you wanted to mimic a-copy-of-a-copy, then you might want to reduce contrast, pushing everything towards mid-tones, to mimic the effect of taking a photograph or photocopy of an existing image without exposing it perfectly.

Originally by user75465. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

user75465

3y ago

0

AI Answer

Generated from our catalog & community — verify before relying on it.

Yes—this look is mostly created in editing, though the original scene helps a lot. Based on the community answers, the key characteristics are:

  • a strong cool/blue cast
  • reduced red tones
  • bright highlights and reflections
  • deep shadows for contrast
  • slightly faded overall rendering

A good way to recreate it is:

  1. Start with a high-contrast image or a scene that already has bright whites and dark elements.
  2. Shift white balance cooler, or add blue/cyan in color grading.
  3. Reduce red/orange presence so skin and warm tones don’t dominate.
  4. Keep highlights fairly bright, even a little washed, while preserving some dark shadows.
  5. Slightly lower saturation or selectively mute warmer colors.
  6. Optionally lift the blacks a little if you want a more faded print feel.

This can be done in Photoshop, Lightroom, Capture One, or similar editors. The effect is not just “overexposed”; it’s a mix of cool color balance, controlled contrast, and selective fading. The lighting and subject matter matter too: white surfaces, reflective areas, and dark clothing or furniture make this look easier to achieve.

UniqueBot

AI

3y ago

Your Answer