Desaturate the Photo
Adding sepia tones to digital photos is a popular technique and there are a number of ways to produce an antique photo effect in Pixelmator. The simplest way to apply an antique photo effect in Pixelmator is to use the application's dedicated Sepia filter. You can do this by going to Filter > Color > Sepia Tone and adjusting the slider, but this offers you limited control over the final effect. However, it is worth looking at because if the result is satisfactory, it is a very quick and easy way to achieve the result.
In case you are looking for more control, I'll show you how to use a few features within Pixelmator to produce a version which you will have more control over. In fact, by using different colors, you can tint your photos in other ways using some of these techniques, rather than just giving your digital photos an antique photo effect.
The following steps will show you how to add layers to a document in Pixelmator, choose a color, use blending modes and change the color of images using the Hue and Saturation feature.
If you don't own a copy of Pixelmator, you may want to take a look at our introduction to this stylish image editor for Mac OS X. It is a well featured app with an attractive price which is ideal for beginner and intermediate users.
Before pressing on, you will need to pick a photo that you want to give an antique photo effect. Any digital photo should be fine, but this can be an effective way to make a dull and uninteresting image appear a little more pleasing.
With Pixelmator launched, go to File > Open and then navigate to your selected photo before clicking it to select it and pressing the Open button. Your photo should now open and if you want to resize the Pixelmator window, pressing Cmd+0 will resize the image to fill the window.
In the next step we'll start making the changes to apply the sepia tone to the photo.
This step will just convert your color photo to black and white. It isn't essential to carry out this step and you can create other interesting color tint effects on your photos if you leave the original image in color. However as we're aiming to apply an antique photo effect, desaturating the photo does give us a little more flexibility, particularly if we want to change the opacity of the sepia layer later on.
Converting your photo to black and white is very straight forward, you just go to Image > Desaturate. You'll now see your photo has been converted to black and white. Now would be a good time to save a copy of the image so that you don't lose your original. Go to File > Save As and in the dialog save the image as a .PXM file as we'll be adding extra layers shortly.
The next step is to add a new layer that we will use to apply the sepia tone to the photo.
If you can't see the Layers palette, go to View > Show Layers to display it. You should see that there is one untitled layer in the palette already with a thumbnail of the photo.
There are two ways to add a new layer. The first is to click the little + icon in the bottom left of the Layers palette. If you want to give the layer a name, double click on the text label of the new layer and write the new name.
The other way is to go to Layer > New Layer. This opens a dialog where you can name the new layer before it is added. You can also change the layer's blending mode and opacity. Although we will be changing these later, leave them as is if you use this method to add your new layer. You'll see I used this method and named the layer Sepia.
The next step is to fill the new layer with a solid fill of sepia. There is more than one way to do this, but I'll just show you one for now.
Go to Edit > Fill and you'll see a Fill dialog open and your image should be hidden by a solid color. Click on the little button next to the Color label to open the familiar OS X color picker. I used the color wheel option to select an orange color and then pulled the lightness slider downwards to darken the shade to give something closer to sepia.
When you've got a color that you're happy with, click the OK button. You may have to manually close the color picker dialog also by clicking the red button at the left of the top bar.
Now we can perform the magic that will combine the solid layer of sepia with the photo underneath.
In the Layers palette, ensure that the sepia layer is selected – just click it to ensure that it is highlighted. Now change the Blendingdrop down towards the bottom of the palette to Soft Light. You can also slide the Opacity slider a little to the left if you like, but the exact shade will be rather dependent on personal taste.
If you're not happy with the color that you've produced now that it's had the blending mode changed, you can tweak the color a little using the Hue and Saturation control. I'll show how on the next page and you'll also see how you can change the color completely to produce a very different and dramatic effect.
The Hue and Saturation feature is an intuitive tool that really does invite experimentation.
Ensure that the sepia layer is selected and then go to Image > Hue and Saturation. In the dialog that opens, you'll see a color wheel surround by six grab handles. You can click and drag any of the handles and you'll see the color of your image change. The buttons above the wheel allow you to change the hue of individual colors within the photo, but we won't worry about that here.
You could use the color wheel to make a very subtle change to the color and you can make further changes by tweaking the Saturation and Lightness sliders below. With both sliders, you'll see that moving to the right increases the effect, while moving to the left decreases the effect.
Just to show how you can use this method to make dramatic changes, I made the photo purple and fiddled with the Saturation and Lightness a little too.
In case you are looking for more control, I'll show you how to use a few features within Pixelmator to produce a version which you will have more control over. In fact, by using different colors, you can tint your photos in other ways using some of these techniques, rather than just giving your digital photos an antique photo effect.
The following steps will show you how to add layers to a document in Pixelmator, choose a color, use blending modes and change the color of images using the Hue and Saturation feature.
If you don't own a copy of Pixelmator, you may want to take a look at our introduction to this stylish image editor for Mac OS X. It is a well featured app with an attractive price which is ideal for beginner and intermediate users.
Before pressing on, you will need to pick a photo that you want to give an antique photo effect. Any digital photo should be fine, but this can be an effective way to make a dull and uninteresting image appear a little more pleasing.
With Pixelmator launched, go to File > Open and then navigate to your selected photo before clicking it to select it and pressing the Open button. Your photo should now open and if you want to resize the Pixelmator window, pressing Cmd+0 will resize the image to fill the window.
In the next step we'll start making the changes to apply the sepia tone to the photo.
This step will just convert your color photo to black and white. It isn't essential to carry out this step and you can create other interesting color tint effects on your photos if you leave the original image in color. However as we're aiming to apply an antique photo effect, desaturating the photo does give us a little more flexibility, particularly if we want to change the opacity of the sepia layer later on.
Converting your photo to black and white is very straight forward, you just go to Image > Desaturate. You'll now see your photo has been converted to black and white. Now would be a good time to save a copy of the image so that you don't lose your original. Go to File > Save As and in the dialog save the image as a .PXM file as we'll be adding extra layers shortly.
The next step is to add a new layer that we will use to apply the sepia tone to the photo.
If you can't see the Layers palette, go to View > Show Layers to display it. You should see that there is one untitled layer in the palette already with a thumbnail of the photo.
There are two ways to add a new layer. The first is to click the little + icon in the bottom left of the Layers palette. If you want to give the layer a name, double click on the text label of the new layer and write the new name.
The other way is to go to Layer > New Layer. This opens a dialog where you can name the new layer before it is added. You can also change the layer's blending mode and opacity. Although we will be changing these later, leave them as is if you use this method to add your new layer. You'll see I used this method and named the layer Sepia.
The next step is to fill the new layer with a solid fill of sepia. There is more than one way to do this, but I'll just show you one for now.
Go to Edit > Fill and you'll see a Fill dialog open and your image should be hidden by a solid color. Click on the little button next to the Color label to open the familiar OS X color picker. I used the color wheel option to select an orange color and then pulled the lightness slider downwards to darken the shade to give something closer to sepia.
When you've got a color that you're happy with, click the OK button. You may have to manually close the color picker dialog also by clicking the red button at the left of the top bar.
Now we can perform the magic that will combine the solid layer of sepia with the photo underneath.
In the Layers palette, ensure that the sepia layer is selected – just click it to ensure that it is highlighted. Now change the Blendingdrop down towards the bottom of the palette to Soft Light. You can also slide the Opacity slider a little to the left if you like, but the exact shade will be rather dependent on personal taste.
If you're not happy with the color that you've produced now that it's had the blending mode changed, you can tweak the color a little using the Hue and Saturation control. I'll show how on the next page and you'll also see how you can change the color completely to produce a very different and dramatic effect.
The Hue and Saturation feature is an intuitive tool that really does invite experimentation.
Ensure that the sepia layer is selected and then go to Image > Hue and Saturation. In the dialog that opens, you'll see a color wheel surround by six grab handles. You can click and drag any of the handles and you'll see the color of your image change. The buttons above the wheel allow you to change the hue of individual colors within the photo, but we won't worry about that here.
You could use the color wheel to make a very subtle change to the color and you can make further changes by tweaking the Saturation and Lightness sliders below. With both sliders, you'll see that moving to the right increases the effect, while moving to the left decreases the effect.
Just to show how you can use this method to make dramatic changes, I made the photo purple and fiddled with the Saturation and Lightness a little too.