Vintage Colortone Effect

Here’s an original vintage postcard:

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, © 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.

1. Open the picture in Photoshop and press Ctrl+J (Mac: Cmd+J) to copy the image to a new layer.
2. 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).
3. Change the Blend Mode for the Vivid layer to Overlay.

Set Duplicate layer to Overlay

4. 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

5. 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.

1. 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).
2. Rename this new layer as Merged.

Copy of merged layers at top of stack

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

Gaussian Blur

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

Threshold adjustment layer set to Multiply

7. In the Adjustments panel, move the slider to the until there is only a small amount of black in the grassy areas. I set my slider to 71.

Adjust the Threshold slider

Next: Step Three: Edge Details

Vintage Hand-Tinted Postcard

This intermediate tutorial assumes that you already have the following skills:

• selecting and adjusting brushes
• picking a foreground color
• painting in the image window
• using the Eraser tool to erase pixels
• changing blend modes on the Layers panel
• using the Quick Selection tool to select pixels
• viewing and interacting with panels (palettes)

Introduction

Yesterday I found a gorgeous vintage postcard from Germany in a local antique mall. Let’s study some of the details that make this image haunting and beautiful, so that we can recreate the look in Photoshop with another, modern photo. Take a look at the real vintage postcard below.

Original Vintage Postcard

The overall color is a sepia tone. Individual areas were tinted by hand to create the blue, green and pink colors. The intensity of these colors depends on how much paint was on the artist’s brush, or how many times he or she painted over an area.

The foreground and background are blurred, while the figure and the rock she rests upon are in focus. The edges have a slightly “burnt” look. Upon close inspection, the image has a slight film grain to it. Finally, the card has picked up a couple of slight creases.

The first part of my tutorial will focus on creating a Sepia Tone effect. The second part will show you how to “hand-tint” the photo. The third part will show you how to give it an authentic, vintage look.

Here’s what our final image will look like (click for a larger version):

Final Image - click for a larger version

Source Files

I’ll be working with the following files, but of course this technique can work with other images. The first is a photo I located at iStock. You can download it for this tutorial. If you want to use if for other purposes, please purchase it here. I looked through hundreds of images, before finding one that had similar elements to the original postcard: a lovely lady gazing into a pond, a light-colored, soft dress, greenery, and flowers. Click on the image below to view and download the larger image:

Source Image - Click to view and download larger image

We will also use a creased, dirty cardboard texture to age the photo. I found this image at pokedstudio.com. I desaturated it, reduced its size, and flipped it around to fit our postcard. I also dodged the creases to make them stand out more. Click on the image below to view and download the larger image:

Cardboard - Click to view and download larger image

Part One: Sepia Toning

First, we will strip out the original colors and create a sepia tone effect..

1. Open the photo of the lady looking into a pond. Click on the Create new fill or adjustment layer icon at the bottom of the Layers panel, and select Black and White.

Add Black and White Adjustment Layer

2. In the Adjustments panel, select Lighter from the Black and White dropdown menu. You can leave the other default settings, or fiddle with them to get a black and white version you like.

Black and White - Lighter

3. Click on the Create new fill or adjustment layer icon at the bottom of the Layers panel, and select Hue/Saturation.

Add Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layer

4. In the Adjustments panel, enter the following settings:
   • Hue: 26
   • Saturation: 37
   • Lightness: -15
   • Click the “Colorize” checkbox.

Hue, Saturation and Lightness settings

Sepia Tone effect

Next: Part Two: Hand-Tinting Effect