Aging a color photo with coffee

Aging a color photo is obviously more challenging than making a black and white or a sepia tone image look old – difficult, but not impossible.
Especially if you like coffee.
Now on to the details:
The first step is to un-vibrant (is this a word?) the image so it doesn’t look too vivid. You can do this during scanning or in your image editor by reducing the highlights, saturation, and contrast. Or you can just go for one of your unsuccessful washed-out photos (as you see, unsuccessful doesn’t necessarily mean failed).

The next step is to create an aged looking paper, which I did by using the leftovers of my morning coffee. Really! All you need to do is crumble a paper (I used watercolor paper), soak it in coffee, and let it dry in the sun. Now the same watercolor paper looks like it has seen many years of hardship.

Next, scan the stained paper, open your favorite photo editor and blend it on another layer with your washed out image. And just like before, you will need to play around with the blending and transparency settings until you like what you see.

By the way, if you are not a coffee drinker and prefer tea, no worries; you can do the same process using tea instead of coffee. I’m sure there are many other ways to age a paper such as burning, ink stains, distressed ink, antique solutions, or simply use an actual aged paper from an old book. These are just a few methods to choose from, so simply select whatever works best for you.

As a final touch, you can darken the edges of the photo by using the darken or burn tool in your photo editor.

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2 Responses to “Aging a color photo with coffee”

1. Anandam Banerjee says:

   December 9, 2011 at 4:42 pm

   thanks for sharing the tips! got to try this! the best part is that it seems so easy, and the result u got is great!
2. Paul Deatherage says:

   December 9, 2011 at 5:44 pm

   Love the tip! Now I'm going to have to coerce some watercolor paper from my granddaughter ;o) I'm sure she will give me some if I let her get in on the fun!