Vintage is the new grunge…or so it would seem. Instead of going for a heavy grunge look, many designers are just creating vintage looks. Seems there is a bit of nostalgia that comes with it. Sort of makes you wish life wasn’t so busy. But I digress.

The vintage effect that people go for with photos is actually quite simple to do. But instead of creating a complex tutorial explaining exactly how to do it (maybe I’ll do that later), I’ve just created a simple Photoshop action that you can download and with the click of a button apply it to any photo…immediately giving you that jazzy, old-school, vintage look.

Here’s a quick look at a couple of photos to show you what this action is capable of.

Download Vintage Photo Effect Action (4KB ZIP file)

Installation

To install the action, un-zip the file and place the VintagePhotoEffect.atn file in Photoshop’s Presets/Actions folder and then go to “Load Actions” in the Actions panel in Photoshop.

To run the action, just select the layer of the photo you want to apply the effect to and then run the action.

Try the action out and then post what you come up with in the Designerside Flickr Group. Let me know if you have any questions.