Vintage effects on a plate

James Paterson shows you how to get the 19th Century wet plate look in Affinity with your free start images

- James Paterson

If you want to evoke the past in your photos, why not style them to look as if they were captured decades – or even centuries – ago. There are all sorts of tricks we can employ in Affinity Photo to do so. We’ll explore a host of vintage editing techniques here. First we’ll use a texture in combination with a layer blending mode.

This is an easy way to add faded areas, dirt and grime to our image, as we can transfer the messy bits from our texture onto our photo with ease. Once done, we’ll use Adjustment Layers to remove the colour and add a tint just like an old vintage photo. We can also use filter effects to mimic the imperfections we’d often see in old photos, like soft blurry corners and heavy, dark vignetting. Finally, we can add a vintage border to give the image the look of an old wet plate.

We’ve supplied a fabulous array of old borders amongst the project files for you to experiment with. They’re based on the wet plate collodion technique used by photographers in the 19th century. The technique required photo processing in a mobile darkroom, and resulted in a negative image on a glass plate. Over time the chemicals on the glass would deteriorate and flake, and the surface might become covered in dust and grime. As such, the 10 border files supplied come with two layers – one for the edges, another for the dusty centre area which can be blended with your photos with ease.

STEP BY STEP

GET THE WET PLATE LOOK