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.