Remember the garage door photo from a few weeks ago?

This is how it originally looked:

I thought the door had a great look and somebody casually walking by probably would not notice all its flaws — the rust, the faded sections, etc. But I knew with a little Photoshop elbow grease, I could give it the cool 1920s feel I saw in my mind’s eye.

Although I aligned the photo carefully when I snapped the picture, it still wasn’t perfect, so I gave it more symmetry with a combination of the straightening tool and the Transform Skew. It didn’t take much. I also cropped it to remove the extraneous elements like the door knob.

Next came the part which you either love or hate, depending on your personality — getting rid of all the dings and imperfections. I used both the spot healing brush tool and the clone stamp, depending on which one gave me the best result. Fortunately I like doing this kind of detail work. Since it was only a photo for the blog, I didn’t try to be absolutely perfect. I just got rid of most of the crud.

Then I did all the usual color and highlight corrections, and then I pumped up the contrast, which helped get rid of some of the leftover blotchiness. To give it a real 1920s feel, I could have also used the Black & White Adjustment, but I liked having the hint of color there.

Nothing about what I did to this photo was earth-shattering, but all I needed was basic Photoshop tools and a little patience to create a nice effect.