How to get an authentic looking vintage black and white look

So far in this series I’ve looked at black and white conversion tools, basic black and white tonal adjustments and the different ways you can use digital dodging and burning to bring black and white images to life. But if you want to make them look actually old, there’s a bit more to do. It’s not one single technique you need, but a whole bunch used together.

• Other articles in this black and white series
• Why photograph in black and white?
• How to shoot in black and white
• What are the best cameras for black and white photography?
• Converting color photographs to black and white: what’s the best method to use?
• Basic black and white adjustments in your digital darkroom
• Dodging and burning techniques, a key part of black and white imagery
• Black and white software and plug-ins – do you really need them?
• How to get an authentic looking vintage black and white look

And let’s say this right off – the aim is not an attempt to deceive your audience into believing that an image is analog when in fact it’s digital. The aim here is to evoke the mood, feel and response that these analog materials were (and are) able to create.You might think that recreating a ‘vintage’ look would be simple, right? Just convert an image to black and white, add a sepia toning effect and you’re done, surely?

Actually, no. If that’s all you do you get a modern digital image that looks just like what it is – a modern digital image with sepia toning. In fact, creating a vintage appearance is a much subtler and more complex thing that relies on a lot of visual cues and associations.

So let’s look at some of the ways in which digital images are different, and what we can do to them to make them look more like analog films and darkroom processes, with all the imperfections, quirks and qualities – and the effects of ageing – that make analog images so evocative.

Toning and split toning and when to use it

Toning is a popular but not essential black and white technique. It involves adding a color tint to a black and white image using toning chemicals in the darkroom or digital toning techniques in software. The best-known toning style is sepia toning, which replicates a vintage look. Sometimes this is done well, sometimes it looks terrible (usually when it’s done as an in-camera effect). But sepia toning is not the only option – there are many others.

You can also get selenium toning, cyanotypes (actually a different process, but we’ll include it), ferrotypes and many more. These may be available as ready-to-use presets in your photo editing software or you may have to create them manually using toning tools.

The best of these enable you to choose the hue of the toning effect and its saturation, and then apply it to the shadows, midtones or highlights of the image, or different combinations of these. Personally, I find low levels of saturation and applying toning effects to the shadows or midtones only give the best results for my tastes.

Split toning is a more sophisticated variation. Here, you can apply one toning tint to the shadows and another to the highlights. It can sometimes be effective, but in my opinion there are only a handful of color combinations which are at all effective and often it’s not worth the effort to try to juggle multiple split toning parameters for minutes on end.

I do use toning quite a lot. Done badly it looks like a crude kind of color wash, but done well it can add an indefinable richness and depth to black and white images. My favorites are a deep, rich sepia, not too saturated, a subtle cold ‘selenium’ tone or a deep, dark and mysterious green tone.

Simulated film grain

One of the most obvious differences is film grain – and while digitally-captured images have noise, which kind of seems like the same thing, the visual difference is huge. Digital noise has a very ‘digital’ pixelated appearance quite different to the more organic ‘clumping’ of film grains. Perhaps one day, far into the future, we will regard digital noise with the same nostalgic affection that we do with film grain today, though that does seem unlikely.

In the meantime, most photo editors now offer pretty good film grain simulation tools, some even claiming to replicate the grain of specific analog films. I’m not too sure about that, but what I am sure of is that one of the most popular photo editors of all – Adobe Lightroom – produces one of the best film grain effects. I would put Capture One’s film grain simulation on the same level. Both programs offer sliders for modifying the grain characteristics, both convincingly reproduce the ‘clumping’ and irregularity of true film grain, and both do the one thing that separates ‘good’ grain simulations from the rest – the grain effects they create actually erode the fine detail in the image instead of just sitting on top as a kind of overlaid texture. That, for me, is a key factor.

Many other programs, effects tools and plug-ins offer grain simulation too. It can be very convincing and, done carefully, can really add a kind of analog patina to digital images. In fact, Capture One considers grain to be such an important textural quality in digital images that it treats its grain effect as an everyday enhancement rather than a novelty effect, and one to be applied subtly in order to break up the sometimes ‘glassy’ surface appearance of digital images.

Vignette effects

Vintage photos will often have a visible vignette effect. The picture may fade away to white at the edges, a deliberate effect typically seen with formal Victorian portraits, or the photo may darken at the edges in a way characteristic of old lenses, cheap cameras or vintage field cameras. Both types of vignette can be very effective in recreating a vintage feel.

You’ll find a vignette effect in many photo editors – Lightroom and Capture One can both create a vignette effect – but if your software doesn’t offer this you can create the same effect with a radial graduated filter, then inverting the mask so that it’s the areas outside the central area that are affected by your adjustments.

Matte effect/fading

Analog Efex, part of the DxO Nik Collection, has an interesting ‘Fade’ tool which reduces the contrast of the image and makes it look as if it has aged naturally over time. In fact, you can achieve the same effect with levels and curves adjustments, and it’s really quite simple. All you need to do is raise the black point of the image so that it reproduces as a mid- or dark gray. In regular photo editing this is the last thing you would do, as most experts would insist a photograph should have a full range of tones from darkest black to brightest white. In fact, though, vintage images will often have a more restricted range of tones, and you can replicate this quite easily.

Borders and frames

So far, I’ve created these effects in Capture One. You could achieve the same results in Lightroom. But for the following vintage effects you will need the help of more specialized software such as ON1 Photo RAW/Effects, Nik Analog Efex or Nik Silver Efex. For these, let’s start with borders and frames.

Let’s be clear – we’re not talking about the dreadful pretend ‘wood’ and other faux 3D frame types you get in Photoshop Elements and programs like it. There are many black and white effects tools that offer simple black or white frames, simulated print borders and rougher and more organic black frames in varying thicknesses.

Do you actually need frames and borders for your black and white images? Opinions may vary, but I personally think they add a great deal. A simple black border around a black and white image can be very effective at ‘containing’ the image and its composition, and it can also establish a strong and satisfying  tonal range.

There’s something else. I do think that adding a frame or a border around an image is an indication to the viewer that you intend the photograph to be looked at properly. It’s as if you are showing the picture proper respect.

I’m not so sure about fake 35mm filmstrip borders (they never get the number of sprocket holes right!) but I do like the simulated large and medium format rebates offered by some editing tools. Pretending that the image is an actual frame from a film roll or a single sheet from a large format camera might seem like a bit of a cheap trick, but it does add something.

Dust, scratches and textures

You won’t find these effects in Lightroom or Capture One, so you’ll need a dedicated analog effects tool to recreate this kind of ‘distressed’ look. Analog Efex does this rather well, as done ON1 Effects (sold separately but also part of ON1 Photo RAW).

You might imagine that you would need an infinite number of different texture overlays to avoid repeating the same texture on all your photos, but in practice you don’t seem to notice even if you do. The photographs are different so you don’t notice the similarity in the placement of scratches, blotches and other textural effects. 

If you wanted to, you could make a collection of your own textures, captured from real life and then combined with your black and white images. It’s easy enough to do with any photo editor that supports image layers and different blend modes.

Bokeh and blur

Strictly speaking, these are not the same thing. Blur is, well, blur, but ‘bokeh’ is the visual quality of that blur. However, many people now use these two terms interchangeably (including some software designers) so we’re probably stuck with it.

The reason blur effects are so good at recreating a vintage look is that older cameras typically use much larger film/negative sizes. This means that the focal lengths of the lenses used are much longer and therefore, as students of photography will be aware, the depth of field is much shallower. Your main subject will be in focus but, unless you have used an extremely small lens aperture, the foreground and the background will be blurred.

This is one of those important visual cues that can make a black and white image look ‘vintage’. It can be quite difficult to reproduce this look with today’s cameras, except with very fast lenses used at their widest aperture, but it’s possible to recreate this look digitally and in a pretty convincing way.

Many programs offer a ‘bokeh’ or selective blur tool where you can mask a part of the image (your main subject) and apply a progressive blur to the rest. The mask is feathered, so the sharp and blurred areas are blended very smoothly. It’s not the same as proper ‘optical’ blur for all sorts of reasons, but actually your eyes don’t really question the effect unless it’s done really badly.

Adobe Lightroom does have a very interesting Lens Blur tool which is much more effective at identifying and then masking your main subject and then progressively blurring nearer and farther detail. It does this using AI to analyze the image and work out a kind of ‘depth map’ of near and far objects. It’s not perfect, but it’s still very good, and if you use Lightroom then you should definitely take a look.

Light leaks, multiple exposures and other camera ‘faults’

One way of evoking a ‘vintage’ look is to simulate the failings and defects of old cameras – and ‘light leaks’ are a very popular method. You get light leaks on film when the camera is not fully lightproof and light gets through to the film through gaps. This produces bright streaks or patches on the film.

This is easy to reproduce digitally and many effects tools offer this option. Analog Efex is one, ON1 Effects is another. You usually get a wide choice of leak patterns and controls to adjust their strength and direction.

The idea of light leaks is that by simulating the failings of an old film camera you’re capturing something of that era and the equipment used and perhaps a more naive and experimental time.

Analog Efex has a particularly interesting effect I haven’t seen elsewhere – an accidental multiple exposure effect. So this isn’t a deliberate creative effect combining two images, but the sort of ‘accident’ you get if you forget to wind on the film between two exposures, or the camera doesn’t do it properly. It sounds like a pretty cheap and dreadful approach, but Analog Efex does it extremely well.

In fact, if you are keen to experiment with vintage looks for your black and white photos, Analog Efex is perhaps one of the best tools to do it with. DxO FilmPack is more historically accurate in its film and analog process simulations, but Analog Efex is perfect for creating old snapshot camera effects.

The subject has to be right

You can’t make a photo look ‘vintage’ with effects alone because the subject itself has to match the era you’re trying to evoke. The sample images I’ve used here are from historic interiors, re-enactment events and vintage motorcycle meets. The illusion of age only works if the subject fits.