Old Photos: I want to retain the old brown look

[Ben]

I have two old black & white photos of my parents which have now obtained that brown cast so familiar with old photos. As they are two seperate photos the backgrounds are a different colour but I want to put both my parents on the same photo. Is there a way of turning them into greyscale and somehow reviving the senna like appearance. Or is there some simpler method? I want to retain the old brown look.
Thanks

[DJ Dubovsky]

Hi Ben,
Welcome to Retouch Pro.
Yes, there are alot of ways to Sepia tone digital copies. The easiest way to get it to greyscale is to scan it in RGB and open the file in Photoshop. Now add an adjustment layer of Hue / Satuartion and lower the saturation all the way to the left until it becomes a greyscale. Now add a new layer and fill that layer with a nice golden orange color from the color swatches and change the blend mode to color. Now lower the opacity until you achieve the right blend of sepia. If it's too orange or too yellow just run the hue/sat on it and adjust the hue a bit.

You could also desaturate the image using Hue Sat and then in the actions you will find a default action to automatically sepia tone the images. I like the other way myself because I get more control. Hope that helps. Other members will probably give you many other options as well. There are usually hundreds of ways to do things in Photoshop and you just need to find the one that suits you best. Good luck and let us know how you do with them.
DJ

[dcarr]

Hi Ben,
One way I like is image/mode/grayscale, then image/mode/duotone or tritone. There you can experiment with a variety of shades and see how they look before applying to the new layers.
Debbie

[Ben]

Have tried all the suggestions. The trickier ones where experimentation is concerned need a lot more work. I have to say the method where you just tell it colorize and voila a beautiful sepia tone appears appeals to me at the moment. Thank you both for the suggestions I will work on the others ideas.