Retro Urban

Learn how to create 'retro urban' looking photographs and apply the same technique to close up and abstract photos to create your own textures. The possibilities are endless. Top - before. Bottom - after. Image from istockphoto. 

1) Turn your photo to a high-contrast black and white.

1a. Go to Enhance - Adjust Color - Remove Color. [Shift+Ctrl+U]

1b. Go to Enhance - Adjust Color - Adjust Color Curves...

Look at the picture above for reference. Depending on your photograph you're going to have different settings. Basically you want to move the Highlights and Midtone Brightness sliders toward the right and the Midtone Contrast slider toward the left. To what extent you move your sliders depends on your photo. You want fairly high contrast, but you still want to be able to differentiate the details. For the Shadows slider you will rarely move the slider toward the right (only if your image is still very 'black' after pumping up the brightness) and if you do move it to the right, you will only a tad. More likely, you'll either leave it in the middle or move it to the left until the blacks stand out nicely.

I used the settings above. And here's how my black and white photo turned out:

2) Add the 'Urban'.

2a. Go to Layer - New Fill Layer - Solid Color. Choose #070736 (a dark blue). Click OK. Set the blend mode of this layer to Screen and the opacity to 79%.

2b. Go to Layer - New Fill Layer - Solid Color. Choose #86eefe (a bright turquoise). Click OK. Set the blend mode of this layer to Soft Light and the opacity to 79%.

3) Add the Blocks.

3a. Create a new layer. Using the Paint Bucket Tool, fill it with #808080 (50% gray).

3b. Go to Filter - Stylize - Extrude.

Depending on the size of your image you will set both the size and depth to a number between 50 and 200 pixels. Make sure you set both the size and depth at the same number.

My image is approximately 3000 by 2000 pixels and I'm using 200 px.

3c.  Go to Filter - Stylize - Glowing Edges. [consult table below.]

3d. Go to Filter - Blur - Gaussian Blur. [consult table below.]

Extrude Size/Depth	Glowing Edge Width, Brightness, and Smoothness Values	Gaussian Blur Radius
50 px	3, 10, 9	1 px
100 px	4, 10, 10	1.5 px
150 px	5, 10, 11	3 px
200 px	7, 10, 12	5 px

3e. Set the blend mode of this layer to 'Screen'.

3f. If you have a lot of shadow in your photo you might want to mask out some of the effect. I added a mask and painted on the bottom:

4. Add Texture.

4a. Create a new layer and fill it with #808080 (50% gray). Go to Filter - Texture - Patchwork.

Depending on your image size you want to use one of the settings below:

Square Size	Relief
2	10
4	14
6	13
8	16
9	17

For my size I've used 9 and 17 for the Square Size and Relief respectively.

4b. Set the blend mode of this layer to Overlay and the opacity to 62%.

4c. Create a layer mask for this layer. Click on your background black and white layer. Select All (Ctrl + A), copy (Ctrl + C) and while holding down the ALT key on your keyboard click on the layer mask that you created at the beginning of this step. Paste (Ctrl + V).

4d. Go to Enhance - Adjust Lighting - Levels. Set the input values to the following: 0, .50, 179.

5. Add the 'Retro'.

5a. Press Ctrl + Alt + Shift + E. This will duplicate all visible layers and create a merged copy.

5b. Go to Filter - Render - Lighting Effects.... Set your settings to match the ones below. Click OK.

5c. {optional} Duplicate this layer. Apply the filter again (Ctrl + F) and set the duplicated layer's opacity to 63%.

You can also experiment with using this effect on random shots and then using it as a texture over another photo. Annoying I cannot remember exactly what settings I used on the photo below in terms of blend mode, etc. However, I think it could have been overlay. :/ I also added some color layers at different blend modes, masked out some area, and added a white vignette.

[this photo retro-urbanized] + [this photo] =