I've been working on some old houses lately, so I thought I'd try to take the photograph look of them back to the time they were built. The results were OK, but when compressed to posting size, the texture was lost, so following this full size version are 3 crops that really show the feel of the photograph. I think I like the crops even better than the full size. Is there something else I could do to achieve what I'm trying to do, or am I there and just don't know when to stop? Maybe more texture would help the full size, I don't know. I'm just guessing/learning on this, so any comments or suggestions would be appreciated.

Attempt Crop #1

Attempt Crop #2

Attempt Crop #3

Original Color Final

Have you tried the pastell effect with a tad LESS green? Bsteph

LOL, I like the final one, but perhaps it does need a little desat on the green! I'm not sure if it's my eyes or the effect you've used but the first images look very fuzzy to my eyes! ;-)>

I really like these Marshall. What I'm thinking here is that the sepia tone is really good.....but the old pictures I have tend to be a bit more on the yellowish sepia side so you could try that if you wanted to. The other thing is that the texture while it is nice makes the pics look to fuzzy like PC said. If you wanted to give them an old worn look you could use brushes if you haven't tried that already. And randomly scratch and age your image that way. Or maybe just go on the texture a little less. That really is a beautiful house!

I am, therefore I create.......
--- michelleamarante.com

Attached Link: http://www.retouchpro.com/

Yes, really nice. I found this site one day while looking for something else, and it has really nice tutorials (and Challenges!) about restoring old photographs. The stuff you've done here is good in itself. But maybe if you are really after the "old" effect you can use some of these tutorials and sort of work backwards?

P.S. Those dudes in the photo are somehow related to me. I couldn't find any similar house pictures to compare. Grandma's old album had mostly this type of studio shots. Extremely detailed, as the camera was no-doubt huge. Highlights tend to be flatened. Some grunge, but that varies with storage.

I like where you are going with these Marshall, but there does seem to be too much of the texture effect making the images look blurred crop #3 works better than the others. I think Michelle is right about a more yellow sepia for an aged look.

elusive.chaos

"You need chaos in your soul to give birth to a dancing star...." (Nietzsche)

Well, I tend to agree. I gave one of the layers a slight motion blur because it looked too damn clean being originally shot on a digital camera, and one thing I still havent warmed up to is the almost too clean look digital cameras give. I think some of all us older film people may think this. I then sharpened the hell out of the burr layer, and thats where the textured look came from. I didnt import any outside texture. I thought that was kind of cool, but perhaps it took me in a different direction than I started out for. Bev, maybe a lesser layer opacity would have less blur and texture. Your right Michelle... old photos are indeed more yellow! Ill check out that web site Misha. And PC/bsteph, I took down the green saturation on the lawn & bushes, and will post in the gallery later! I appreciate you all, and Im gonna start over on this one. PS I still kind of like the combination of the blur look with the rough sharp edges. Most unusual.