let photographs look like done in civil war era?

[Holger]

(Warning: attached file contains some images, showing violence and death people (a hanging scene and one image with corpses of soldiers of the civil war.)

Hello, I would like to ask if you could please help me to manipulate some of my own photos to let them look like vintage ones, done in the time of the civil war and still some years later.
there are two steps that have to be done:
1) convert the new digital image into an black and white one with that special look (is it the contrast, that makes that special b/w-look?)
2) make it look like disturbed or cracked, cut u and incomplete around the corners, a look, that must be the result of that old technique they have used for the photos at that time.

Is it possible to recreate that look for images, done with a digital camera today?
(I have added a example image of an "old west show" I did, that is one of the images I would like to manipulate)

thanks you for giving me some ideas!

Holger


civilwar.xar

[angelize]

Hello Holger there are many ways to distress or age photos in Xara. You can use a rough shape and clip your photo to it to distress the edges and use the photo tool to desaturate the photo and adjust contrast.

[steve.ledger]

I haven't looked at your file (thanks for the warning) But I do have a possible technique for you as I've done similar things to photos in the past.

(Textures from cgtextures.com)

[angelize]

That turned out quite well Steve, I did have a quick look at Holger's file (although I admit I didn't look too closely at most of the photos)

Here is an example of how I would duplicate what is shown in the file, now that I have a bit more time, Using the color photo that was included in Holger's file I desaturated the photo and used a rough paper shape from a collection that I posted here and clipviewed the photo to the shape. Then I added some noise (Plugins> distortion> add noise) then I cloned (ctrl+K) the photo and with the page and layer gallery open I selected the photo in the cloned clipview, and adjusted the brightness to make it very light and washed out then I used a marble fill from the fills gallery and applied it as a bitmap transparency. you can use the profile sliders to adjust the sharpness and amount of srcatches and distress.

old time photo.xar

[Soquili]

Civil war photographs were made on glass plates. The light sensitive coating was very brittle once dry. The following link will take you to a photograph in the library of congress that shows how some of the glass plates have worn over the years.

http://www.mikelynaugh.com/VirtualCi...Steinwehr.html

[Fred C]

Not how to do it, but for the look. http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/20...es-photography

[Holger]

Thank you all very much for your help!

[angelize]

You can now use the eraser tool to distress the edges of photos and create interesting edge effects.

[jclements]

Steve,

++1
Great job.

[steve.ledger]

Cheers John