Create a Vintage Linen Colortone Postcard in Photoshop CS4

By Dawn Pedersen · 05/31/2009 ·

Vintage Colortone Effect

Linen postcards were printed from 1930 through 1945. They have a unique and appealing look. The thick paper was embossed on the picture side to give the card a “linen” texture, and the cheap inks created vivid colors. You can create this effect using a modern photograph and Photoshop.

Here’s an original vintage postcard:

Scan of Original Vintage Postcard - click to enlarge

Original Vintage Postcard - Colorado National Monument (click to enlarge)

Detail of Linen Texture and Color

Here’s our final image made to mimic the Colortone look:

Final Colortone-style image

A Little History

The vintage postcard above of Colorado National Monument was printed by Curt Teich & Co. (Chicago). They used a color printing technique they called “C.T. Art-Colortone”. Until it closed in 1978, The Teich Company was the world’s largest printer of view and advertising postcards.

Vintage linen postcards have become prized by some collectors, and there’s even a book about them (see the link at the end of the tutorial.) The linen postcards usually portrayed landmarks, landscapes, and roadside attractions from photographs, but some were more illustrative. They were printed on a lithography press using color separation.

Beginning in the late 1940s, linen postcards fell out of fashion when polychrome printing was invented. However, Curt Teich still used the C.T. Art-Colortone technique on these smooth-surface “French Fold” postcards from 1951, below.

'French Fold' Postcard Set for Southwestern Oklahoma - 1951

Source Image

You may use my photograph below for this tutorial. If you want to use one of your own, try to find an image with a variety of color. Click on the image below to download the full-size photograph (309KB).

Giraffes at the San Francisco Zoo, copyright Dawn Pedersen

Giraffes at the San Francisco Zoo, © Dawn Pedersen

Step One: Make it Vivid

The Art-Colortone postcards have very strong colors but minimal detail. We’re going to increase the contrast and color saturation with a simple technique.

Open the picture in Photoshop and press Ctrl+J (Mac: Cmd+J) to copy the image to a new layer.
Double-click on the words “Layer 1″ in the Layers panel, and rename the layer as “Vivid”. Click OK (Go to Window > Layers if the Layers panel is not visible).
Change the Blend Mode for the Vivid layer to Overlay.

Set Duplicate layer to Overlay

Now the photo is a bit dark. Let’s lighten the mood.

With the Vivid layer selected, click on the “Create new fill or adjustment layer” icon at the bottom of the Layers panel. Select Levels.

Add a Level adjustment layer

In the Adjustments panel, move the center gray slider (gamma input) to the left ever so slightly. I set mine to 1.20.

Move gamma slider to the left

Step Two: Simplify It

With cheap inks comes a lack of detail. We need to blur some of the colors while keeping some black edge details. This will result in a slightly watercolor effect.

Make a copy of all the layers merged together: select the Levels adjustment layer at the top of the stack in the Layers panel, then press Shift+Ctrl+Alt+E (Mac: Shift+Cmd+Opt+E).
Rename this new layer as Merged.

Copy of merged layers at top of stack

Right-click on the Merged layer and select Convert to Smart Object. We want to run a filter next without destroying pixels.
Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur. Set the radius to 1.0 and click OK.

Gaussian Blur

With the Merged layer still selected, click on the “Create new fill or adjustment layer” icon again and select Threshold.
Set the blend mode for the new adjustment layer to Multiply.