Creating a retro looking image in Photoshop

I started by setting my background colour to an off white one, as this would add to the worn and retro effect I was going for.   

I then used the custom shape too and selected a shape call ‘registration target 2’. Using the free transform tool I made the shape quite big so that you could only see a small portion of it. I made sure that the centre part of the image was in the lower left and corner.   

 

I wanted to change the colour of the shape to an off black colour, I tried to do this with th paint bucket tool when this message came up.

 

I clicked ok and this allowed me to change the colour using the paint bucket tool. I don’t want this colour to be too dominating so reduced the opacity to 29%. 

 

Next I had to make my multi coloured stripes. I used the magnetic lasso tool to trace the shape of one of the stripes. I then right clicked the finished outline and selected layer via copy.  

 

I used the paint bucket tool to changes the colour and he free transform tool to rotate and position it. I repeated this process until I had six stripes. 

 

Now I need to add some arrows. Again I did this using the custom shape tool. I used the free transform tool to rotate and position it and after rasterizing the layer, used the paint bucket tool to change it to a bright colour. 

I then needed to add several other shapes to the image to make it more of a montage. I used the custom shape tool to create them, changed the colour using the paint bucket tool and gave them a stroke – this would make them look more retro.   

 

Now that I have all my elements in position I will start to make it look more worn and retro. I needed to darken the colours slightly so added a new adjustment layer and selected hue and saturation. I made the hue – 16.  

 

I then created a new layer on top of all of my other layers and used the paint bucket tool to fill it with a light blue colour. I then selected filter, filter gallery and applied the texture ‘grain’ to the layer. I changed the blend mode of the layer to ‘colour burn’. 

I could now see my other images underneath this layer. 

I added another layer but filled it with a grey colour this time. I applied the filer ‘grain’ to this image as well. However on this layer I reduced the fill to 47%, as I didn’t want it to overpower the colours underneath it. I made the blend mode of this layer ‘linear burn’.   

The last thing I did was add a new layer and fill it with the same grey colour as before. Again I gave it a grain filter but this time I changed some of the grain properties.

I made the grain type horizontal and reduced the intensity slightly. I reduced the layer fill to 47% and made the blending mode for this layer overlay. Adding this grain will make my whole image look more worn like an old poster. 

Battleships!

When playing battleships many people approach it different ways. I go for an approach i like to call shove them everywhere and hope for the best. I randomly place my battleships everywhere and just hope that's enough to help me win. However when playing against Alex that wasn't going to be enough. He seemed to have luck on side as he sunk all but one of my battleships. I still hadn't even got one, it was at this point i felt like giving up on the game, i was more or less defeated why carry on there was no chance i could win. So when it came to talk about any changes we wanted to make to the game, this was an area we could agree needed work on.

We introduced an element we later called 'the killer square'. This was a single square both players had to place that, if their opponent hit, it would sink all of their battleships. This gave a losing player a chance to win, give them a glimmer of hope that if they hit that one square they could turn the game around and win out of the blue. Therefore give them an incentive to carry on playing. Just what i needed to want to carry on playing earlier.

Another good thing about this 'killer square' is it makes you play the game more tactically. You need to think about where you place this square, shoving it anywhere could ruin your game if your on a winning streak. You cant place it too close to your ships, in case they get taken down and your opponent mistakes that square as part of that ship. Too far away and it stands out too much.

Although when we played the game again no-one hit that square, we both still felt the pressure whenever the opposing player got close. Adding more unintentional tension to the game. However we both did also agree that when we got close to winning if our opponent did hit that square it would make losing the game even more frustrating. But then again when isnt losing a game frustrating?