Want to give your pictures an aged look? iPhoto’s Effects can help

Digital cameras produce extremely vivid and lifelike pictures, but sometimes it’s nice to recreate the look of an old photograph, and there are tools in iPhoto that can help you do this.

The secret lies in the way iPhoto’s effects and its manual adjustments work together. In most image-editing programs, effects work in isolation. You have some control over how the effect is applied and what the final picture will look like, but that’s it.

In iPhoto, though, effects are "live" adjustments that interact with any changes you make subsequently in the Adjust palette. You might be used to applying effects right at the end of the process in other programs. But in iPhoto, an effect can be the starting point, and you can then go on to change the look of the picture in other ways.

BEFORE: Here’s a scene that could profit from a vintage look. So fire up iPhoto.

AFTER: The Effects panel will have you achieving results in just a few clicks.

You can combine effects too, and they interact in quite subtle ways to produce a wider range of results than you might expect.

The third interesting thing about iPhoto’s effects is that many of them have different strength settings. You increase the strength by repeatedly clicking on the effect’s thumbnail and a counter at the bottom increases each time you click. You can use the arrow icons either side to increase or reduce the effect after applying it.
 
There are old photo effects already in iPhoto, but they’re not especially convincing, and it’s possible to improve on them considerably by using different effects and adjustments in combination. It’s actually quite straightforward to do, as you’ll see from the walkthrough. The great thing is that if you take a wrong turn, it’s easy to change anything you’ve done so far. You don’t have to unravel loads of steps, since all the changes you’ve made work in parallel rather than in sequence.

1 of 9

Use iPhoto’s effects for that "vintage" look

• View the full image

  Sepia Effect

  When in Edit mode, you’ll see iPhoto splits its editing tools into three tabs at the right-hand side of the screen. It’s the middle tab, Effects, that we need here. You’ll see that there’s already a Sepia effect, but if you click on that you’ll see there’s not much subtlety to it.

• View the full image

  B&W Effect

  Instead, we’ll start with the B&W effect. This still looks a bit clean and clinical for an old photo, but it’s a good starting point for what follows. The effect is either On or Off – click once to switch. Apart from Sepia, other effects can be added to with repeated clicks.

• View the full image

  Boost Effect

  If you apply the Boost effect to a color image, it’ll add a warmer tone and increase the contrast slightly. But if you apply it to a photo that’s already had the B&W effect applied, what you get is a much subtler sepia "look" than the Sepia effect. We’ve clicked four times here.

• View the full image

  Adjust Shadows

  The Boost effect increases the contrast, where old photos tend to have less contrast, not more. But we can fix that by switching to the Adjust panel and moving the Shadows slider right up. This brightens the shadowed areas and reduces the overall contrast.

• View the full image

  Adjust Highlights

  You can sometimes improve things still further by adjusting the Highlights slider. Where the Shadows slider lightens the shadows but leaves the rest of the tones in the picture unchanged, the Highlights slider makes the brightest parts of the picture a little darker.

• View the full image

  Adjust Brightness

  The picture still looks a little dark, and not "faded" enough. iPhoto doesn’t have a Brightness slider, but it does have a histogram at the top of the Adjust panel and adjustment markers below it. To make the picture lighter, drag the middle "midtones" slider to the left.

• View the full image

  Adjust Definition

  Old photos often have heightened contrast around the outlines of objects, and the Shadows and Highlights adjustments will bring this out. But you can take it a step further by adjusting the Definition slider. You’ll start to see what it’s doing the more you move the slider.

• View the full image

  Apply Matte Effect

  Complete the "vintage" look by switching back to the Effects panel and applying the Matte effect. This creates a soft oval "matte", or cutout, around the photo, like a vignette, only against white rather than black. Even at the lowest strength the effect is quite strong.

• View the full image

  Quick Tip

  To experiment with color images rather than black and white, use the Antique or Fade effects to give your photos a warm or a cool tinge. Try adding the Edge blur effect, too. This makes the picture look as if it was taken with an older camera.

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
•