the hand tinted effect

in the times of black & white photography, artists occasionally tried to add colors to their black & white paper prints. they usually applied translucent ink to preserve the contours while adding the color.

if you want to achieve a vintage photo effect, simulating hand tinting might be a good idea besides turning the black and grey in the photos into shades of sepia.

here is the basic idea and the steps in gimp; in photoshop, things work analogously.

the basic idea

you will need to produce two versions of the picture to which you want to apply the effect. one will be a greyscale version, the other will be a modified color version. the modification will consist in two steps: first, you will have to brighten the original. then, you will have to turn certain areas of the picture transparent.

the simple but final trick will be to add the modified color version to the greyscale as a layer on top of it. you might consider to even move the color version a bit against the background so that the contours are not completely congruent. this will add to the hand-craft impression.

: original picture

the steps in gimp

here is the picture i want to turn into a vintage one. it shows jeanne, the owner of rejuvenation salon in grand island, nebraska; this picture was to be seen on some ads and on her websites, www.jeannemwagner.com, and www.rejuvenation.name respectively.

the credits for the picture go to hollie from www.hollieshotshots.com in grand island, nebraska.

: greyscale version

the first step is to turn the photo into greyscale. open the picture in gimp. to do so in windows, you just right-click on the picture and choose "open with gimp", or start gimp by double clicking the icon and open the picture from the menu. if you're using linux, you will probably start gimp using the command "gimp &" and open the picture from the menu again.

save the picture ("save as...") by using a different name - i usually insert "_bw" between the name of the picture and the extension. this picture is named "7066.jpg", and the greyscale version "7066_bw.jpg". this way you will make sure not to change the original picture.

then click on "image -> mode" and set it to "greyscale". the picture will loose some of it's properties and be visible as a greyscale version.

now imagine: you will add two pictures, one greyscale and one colored. so in order for the brightness values to be reasonable, you will have to add two brighter versions of the pictures. so now click on "colors -> brightness-contrast" to adjust the brightness.

finally click on "file -> save" (since you already changed the name with "save as...") first.

: brightened version

next produce a brightened version of your original picture. re-open the original by using "file -> open" in the menu. again, save the picture under a new name ("save as..."). i usually insert "_br" between the file name and extension, just as with the greyscale version.

only then start manipulating the picture itself. click on "colors -> brightness-contrast" and set the brightness to, say, 100. alternatively, you might want to set the brightness for individual colors individually. you do this choosing "colors -> hue-saturation" and then selectively changing values.

once you like the color settings, you will have to apply transparency. this is done by using "colors -> color to alpha". there you will be able to select which color you want to turn transparent. you can play with the settings, undoing changes with "edit -> undo".

: hand tinted effect

finally save the product (you've changed the name before, remember). then "select -> all" and "edit -> copy". now the partially transparent color picture is ready to be pasted onto the greyscale version, by clicking the frame of the greyscale and "edit -> paste as -> new layer".

again, save the finished product under a new name using "save as...".

you will probably want to play with that procedure and get used to it. that's what you should do with all the tricks that will be shown here.