Authentic Vintage Effect GIMP Tutorial

Authentic Vintage Effect

A beautiful effect for giving your photos an old vintage feel.

Note: This tutorial has been adapted from this Photoshop tutorial by Veerle.

This effect tends to work best with photos with vivid colors (sky, grass, etc). This is the photo we will be using:

The following steps are for this photo. Remember to experiment as each photo is unique!

Once you've opened your photo, go to Colors > Brightness-Contrast... and set the contrast to +20.

Colors > Hue-Saturation:

Now go to Colors > Curves. Select "Red" from the Channel drop-down and adjust the curve:

Next, adjust the "Green" channel:

And the "Blue" channel:

Click OK.

Go to Colors > Hue-Saturation again:

Create a new layer. Set its opacity to about 50%.

Select the ellipse select tool and draw a selection that covers your entire canvas.

Select > Feather by 150px:

Select > Invert.

Fill your selection with black.

To give your photo a pinkish tone (associated with sun burn of old photos), create a new layer. Set its opacity to about 8%.

Fill it with a very vivid magenta (#FF0090).

Mar 24, 2008, kasrak said:

Video added!
Aug 31, 2009, NyuNyu said:

What a great tutorial, thanks!
May 10, 2012, JonBonning said:

Thanks for such a helpful turtorial! Saved me a lot of time playing with the settings to get my photos looking just right, as I tend to alter too many parameters instead of reverting and trying something different. Also - making two versions of the tutorials did me a big favor! No pausing and scrubbing to make sure I didn't miss an important step.
Nov 15, 2013, jojo82 said:

Thank you for this. I'm a new GIMP user and any and all tutorials are much appreciated.
Login or register to add your comment.