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I want to make my good quality photos look like photos scanned from old newspaper. Maybe halftone in high resolution? Or just find an old laser printer and scanner?

Here is few examples what i mean:

enter image description here

enter image description here

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    What's the question? We help when you've attempted on your own but aren't pleased with the results. Simply showing us an example is like asking us to create a step by step tutorial for you. Please tell us AND show us what you've tried and ask a specific question about where you're stuck on creating the effect.
    – Ryan
    Commented Sep 8, 2014 at 16:25
  • Question is in the header, i will repeat myself for you – 'How to make scanned newspaper effect?'. I have no problem with making photo look old, but i have problem making it look like scanned from newspaper. I know PS well and i DON'T need 101 tutorial, i need ADVICE.
    – tim
    Commented Sep 8, 2014 at 16:39
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    Advice on what? How to make it black and white? How to make it grainy? If you know PS well then you know how to do both of these things. So again I'll ask you, what part are you stuck on? If you're looking for general advice we have no way to help you because we don't know what you've tried. If you aren't satisfied with my response then that's fine but I don't appreciate being called names when I'm trying to assist you.
    – Ryan
    Commented Sep 8, 2014 at 16:54
  • Okay, i got your point now. I have a problem with a texture / grain, yes.
    – tim
    Commented Sep 8, 2014 at 16:59
  • @tim that sort of language will absolutely not be tolerated on this site. I have edited your comment to remove it, you will not get another warning.
    – JohnB
    Commented Sep 8, 2014 at 17:00

2 Answers 2

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I think printing something off and then re-scanning it could work very well, but you may find that even an old laser printer might not give you the halftone that a news paper printer would.

I had an experiment in Photoshop. I used this photo:

enter image description here

  1. Image > Mode > Grayscale
  2. Put the file in 8-bit mode if it isn't already
  3. Image > Mode > Bitmap Here you can experiment to get the halftone you like. How it looks will depend on what resolution you'll end up displaying it at. I left my output dpi at 300 and dropped the frequency, on the next window to 20 for this particular photo. You'll want to make sure the dot style is round for this.
  4. Now put the file back into Grayscale/RGB/whatever as when it's in bitmap you can't access many options.
  5. You will want to adjust the shading so that black is grey and you might want the whites to look a bit blown out too. Curves works great for this! Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Curves. You can see on my screenshot below how I set up the curves panel for my test.
  6. You just need to add a bit of texture now... Some paper texture and some darker black spots where the ink might be thicker. I just used a mixture of Filter > Render > Clouds and Filter > Pixelate > Mezzotint... (coarse dots). And blended these two layers as you'll see below...
  7. As scans are never 100% straight, you may also want to rotate the image a fraction too, this will bring in a little moiré pattern though (which could be good but probably bad on screen). You'll probably want to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur... the halftone and the mezzotint layer a small amount after this though to tone it all down a bit.

enter image description here

enter image description here

If you can get a good scan of plain newsprint, that'll help give you some texture too.

You may also want to add a layer to darken the ink in bands too (I've just done this as another quick 10% overlay layer on top, you could definitely make it look even more realistic/rougher than this though):

enter image description here

You'll need to experiment heavily with this to get it exactly how you want but this should help!

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  • that's pretty good!
    – DA01
    Commented Sep 8, 2014 at 22:00
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Laser printing, manual distressing and scanning would absolutely be an easy straight-forward method.

Barring that, you can (obviously) remove color, then lower contrast and overlay some noise and possibly a texture file to create a distress. I don't know that I would specifically use the Halftone filter, you could. However you may get better results with just noise.

Original
enter image description here

Edited
enter image description here

Closer look
enter image description here

With a halftone filter layer
enter image description here
enter image description here

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  • Thanks, but thats not what i wanted, here you can check close up – i.imgur.com/PxHxZR3.png
    – tim
    Commented Sep 8, 2014 at 17:01
  • @tim see the additional image with the halftone effect. Note, you won't get any decent half toning (for effect) from many laser printers - they are designed to print smoother than that. So if you really want the halftone, printing and scanning won't work well.
    – Scott
    Commented Sep 8, 2014 at 17:03
  • yeah, halftone overlay definitely helps, i managed to get close effect, but not identical – i.imgur.com/dII5rIc.jpg, maybe i need some newspaper texture on the back.
    – tim
    Commented Sep 8, 2014 at 17:17
  • @tim too much contrast. You don't want any white whites or black blacks. Even mine are a bit too black in the reduced sizes here (they are more muted blacks at 100%)
    – Scott
    Commented Sep 8, 2014 at 17:18
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    @scott the trick with the print-then-rescan is to print out your image at say half size, and rescan back in at full size. That way you end up with a much coarser line screen closer to that of a newspaper.
    – DA01
    Commented Sep 8, 2014 at 22:02

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